Andrew Lang was born in Selkirk in 1844, and educated at the universities of St Andrews and Oxford. He studied the classics, writing versions of the Odyssey and the Iliad. He lived and worked in London for most of his life, as a journalist -being the literary editor of Longman’s Magazine for many years- and as a respected literary critic. He was a folklorist, a scholar of myths and religion, and contributed to the study of anthropology, but his first publication was verse: Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), and was followed by a half dozen other collections of rhymes and ballads.
He remains best known today for his 12-volumes of fairy stories, collected from across the globe and often eschewing the popular floral idylls of the day, with folktales of violence and brutality.