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The Beauty and the Beast by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de
Villeneuve was first published in 1740 and later abridged and rewritten
by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in a better-known version in 1743.The
main interests of Mme de Villeneuve’s story are two sections, one
in which the Beast explains how he came to be transformed and why it was
forced to act as he did in regard to the Beauty; and the other in which
the fay who contrived his liberation from his curse explains how and for
what motives an evil rival placed her in that elaborate necessity. This
original account of the organization and politics of the world of Faerie
is of considerable interest, as well as completing the explanatory schema
of the enigmatic fundamental tale.
The Naiads, published 100 years after Mme de Villeneuve’s
death, is one of the earliest fantasy novels. It is set in a distant past
in a fictitious realm with a religion based on elemental spirits. While
it uses the stock motifs of the fairy tale, featuring a Prince Perfect
who falls in love with a shepherdess, unaware that she is really a Princess,
as well as a wicked stepmother and an ugly sister bent on persecuting
the beleaguered heroine, it also looks behind those motifs and provide
them with elaborate explanatory schemas, such as the strange story of
the Mill of Misfortune and the revelation of the Prince’s true identity
by the Gnome Queen.
Cover by Nathalie Lial
Published by Black Coat Press in June 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61227-626-7
