Fairy tales (Märchen) are fictional stories which contain elements of magic or the supernatural. Their usual theme is the triumph over difficulty of the one least likely to succeed. Characters are stylized.
The Arabian Nights, or Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of stories from Arabic literature.
The stories became known in Europe through Antoine Galland's translation into French, and Richard Burton provided a famous English translation.
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), linguists, became famous for their collection of folktales, "Grimm's Fairy Tales". Jacob Grimm also wrote "German Mythology".
Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916), historian and folklorist, compiled several collections of fairy tales and edited Aesop's fables and the Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).
Andrew Lang (1844-1912), writer and folklorist, was one of the first to apply anthropological findings to the study of myth and folklore. He compiled several fairy tale books.
"Il Pentamerone", or "Lo cunto de li cunti" (The Story of Stories), is one of the oldest collections of fairy tales, written down in an embellished style in the Neapolitan dialect by Giambattista Basile (ca. 1575-1632), an Italian soldier and government official. The collection consists of fifty stories told within a frame story.