Flora Annie Steel

Flora Annie Steel (1847–1929) came to the fairy tales of her own country last of all. She spent twenty-two years in India first, and it was there that she began writing down what she heard.

She sailed at twenty and stayed from 1867 to 1889, mostly in the Punjab. She was not only an official’s wife. When her husband’s health failed she took over part of his work, and she later held a post of her own as Inspectress of Government and Aided Schools in the Punjab. Her collection of Indian folk tales came out in 1894.

The English stories waited until the very end. English Fairy Tales was published by Macmillan in 1918, when she was seventy-one, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. In that book, the girl who tastes three bowls of porridge is called Goldilocks.