France's FAIRY QUEEN

Eric Bryan reveals how life is stranger than fiction as he looks beyond the stone bust of a French woman hidden among the foliage of an Honfleur garden

- Eric Bryan

The mysterious stone bust of an enigmatic figure shrouded in ivy feels like an apt tribute to the Frenchwoman who brought us the classic fairy tale. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy is one of 21 historic figures from Normandy who have been honoured in the Garden of Personalities in Honfleur.

But who was this motherly figure who now stands alongside such greats as the artist Claude Monet, navigator Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and King Charles V le Sage?

Once upon a time…

A daughter of the Normandy town of Barneville-la-Bertran, it is believed that author Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, born in 1651, was one of the first to coin the phrase Conte de fées (‘fairy tale’ or ‘fairy story’).

She wrote a number of fairy stories which were published in her collections Les Contes de Fées (1697) and Contes Nouveaux ou Les Fées à la Mode (New Tales, or Fairies in Fashion) in 1698. After Charles Perrault, she is regarded as the most famous French writer of fairy stories. You may be familiar with The Bee and the Orange Tree, The White Cat, The Yellow Dwarf, and The Blue Bird?

D’Aulnoy’s first fairy tale to be published was The Island of Bliss, which was incorporated into her novel History of Hippolyte, Count of Douglas (1690). Although written in the style of those by Charles Perrault, d’Aulnoy’s fairy stories are shot through with sardonic wit and commentary, long-winded digressions, and some have unsatisfactory or unhappy endings. Her lively tales also often feature a powerful and active heroine.

Early life