Plot Villeneuve's Version Illustration for Beauty and the Beast drawn by Walter Crane.Ī widower merchant lives in a mansion with his twelve children (six sons and six daughters).

According to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon, the story originated about 4,000 years ago. Amour pour amour ( Love for love), by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée, is a 1742 play based on de Villeneuve's version. Zémire and Azor is based on the second version of the tale. In France, for example, Zémire and Azor is an operatic version of the story, written by Marmontel and composed by Grétry in 1771, which had enormous success into the 19th century. Variants of the tale are known across Europe. The fairy tale was influenced by Ancient Greek stories such as ' Cupid and Psyche' from The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century AD, and The Pig King, an Italian fairytale published by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola around 1550. Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants ( Children's Collection) to produce the version most commonly retold. ' Beauty and the Beast' ( French: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins ( The Young American and Marine Tales). La jeune américaine, et les contes marins (1740), by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve Magasin des enfants (1756), by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de BeaumontĮast of the Sun and West of the Moon (ATU 425A) Artwork from Europa's Fairy Book, by John Batten

Beauty releases the prince from his beastly curse.

Free instal Beauty and the Beast