Of all the pioneering writers of contes de fées, Mademoiselle Charlotte-Rose Caumont de La Force is perhaps the one who took the greatest imaginative license from the freedom to make arbitrary inventions and narrative moves. The tales collected here, translated for the first time, tell a story that is very different from the historical fantasies built on Perrault's moralistic tales for children. The morals attached to Mademoiselle de La Force's tales are certainly not aimed at children. In fact, what distinguishes her tales from those of her most famous contemporaries is their evident moral unease. By far the most famous of her tales is Persinette which was plagiarized by Friedrich Schultz, who retitled it Rapunzel which became the basis for the Disney film Tangled.
