The best way to learn something about the author of Bee is to study with care the portrait given as the frontispiece of this book. You shall form your own opinion of the man from the artist's drawing and that opinion will depend greatly upon the amount of enjoyment and the number of ideas you have got from his story.
His name is sufficient guide to his nationality, and you will know by easy guesswork that you have been reading a translation of his tale; but the change from French to English is so well made that not much is lost of the charm of the story as Anatole France wrote it. The best way to judge his work is, of course, to read it in French.
Anatole France is not, like Hans Andersen, a recognised fairy-tale writer, which from our point of view seems a pity, because he has the light touch which does not crush the gossamer or brush the dust from the wings of the butterfly. It is of no use having a heavy touch if you are dealing with things like Queen Mab's Wagon.
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs.
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces of the smallest spider's web,
Her whip of crickets' bone, the lash of film;
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coach-makers.
One of our own writers, John Ruskin, wrote one fairy tale called The King of the Golden River, and the rest of his writings, like those of Anatole France, were for grown-up readers. There are some people who think that Ruskin's fairy tale is one of the best of its kind ever written, and Bee: the Princess of the Dwarfs is quite worthy to stand beside it. You may care to compare the two in matters of detail and style, and will find the work very interesting indeed; and you will remember that it is quite fair to compare these two stories, for they were both invented or "made-up" by their authors all out of their own heads.
Most of the old fairy tales, like Cinderella, seem to have grown like the cabbages, or, shall we say, the roses. They have been told again and again by one person after another as the years rolled by and they were well known before anyone set them down in print. In a sense, Bee and The King of the Golden River are not true fairy tales, but you will agree that they are very good imitations of the old models.
Anatole France, whose real surname is Thibault, was the son of a bookseller in Paris, and was born so long ago as 1844. He was brought up among books and among clever men who came to his father's shop not only to buy books but to discuss them. It is not surprising that when he grew up he should begin to write books.
As for his thoughts about things in general, you will find them all in the pages of Bee: the Princess of the Dwarfs.
THE TEMPLE PRESS
LETCHWORTH ENGLAND
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEE: THE PRINCESS OF THE DWARFS ***