Readings in Fiction : History of Children's Literature to 1837 - ENG 360 Resource Guide

from The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English
Cheap pamphlets sold by pedlars or ‘chapmen’ who travelled around the British Isles from the 16th to the 19th century. Usually formed from one sheet of printed paper folded to make a small booklet of a few pages, they seldom had wrappers. The title appeared on the upper page, and they often contained one or more crude woodcuts. They were first described as histories, romances, and Godly books, and the name ‘chapbook’ evolved in the 19th century from the men who sold them.

Summary Article: folktale from The Columbia Encyclopedia
General term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to primitive and complex societies alike. Even the forms folktales take are demonstrably similar from culture to culture, and comparative studies of themes and narrative techniques have been successful in showing these relationships.

These are short ‘once upon a time’ narratives existing paradoxically concurrent with, yet removed from, the present and possessing qualities of entertainment and cautionary instruction, e.g., rites of passage, quests, awakenings, abandonment, etc. Fairy tales have been interpreted sociologically as reflections of social and political structures, but, since the influence of Freud and Jung, they have been interpreted primarily as narratives of inner psychological import.

from The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English
French civil servant, member of the Académie Française (1671), essayist and poet. He is best remembered, however, for his Histoires ou contes du temps passé; avec des Moralitez (1697), a collection of stories often known in English as ‘fairy tales’, including such favourites as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood.

from The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Madame d'Aulnoy is best known as the author of charming fairy tales (including “Goldilocks”), which were published as Contes de fées (1697; Fairy Tales) and Contes nouvelles ou les fées à la mode (1698; New Tales, or the Fancy of the Fairies).