Beauty and the Beast

"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).[1][2] Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants[3] (Children's Collection) to produce the version most commonly retold.[4] Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889.[5] 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.[6]

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Beauty and the Beast
Beauty releases the prince from his beastly curse. Artwork from Europa's Fairy Book, by John Batten
Folk tale
Name	Beauty and the Beast
Also known as	Die Schöne und das Biest
Aarne–Thompson grouping	ATU 425C (Beauty and the Beast)
Region	France
Published in	La jeune américaine, et les contes marins (1740), by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve; Magasin des enfants (1756), by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Related	Cupid and Psyche (ATU 425B) East of the Sun and West of the Moon (ATU 425A)

Variants of the tale are known across Europe.[7] 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.[8] Zémire and Azor is based on the second version of the tale. Amour pour amour (Love for Love) by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée is a 1742 play based on de Villeneuve's version. According to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon, the story originated about 4,000 years ago.[9][10][11]