Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault is a famous writer widely well-known as he started a new literary genre, the Fairy Tale. His most famous stories had a folk starting point and even today are in print and have been made into movies, plays and operas.
Perrault was born in Paris on 12 January 1628. His twin brother Claude was one of the architects of the Louvre Museum. They belonged to a wealthy family which allowed them study at the best schools.
In 1643 Charles started to study law, but some years later, in 1654 he began to work in the government service. He took part in the opening of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Painting, too. His first book Troya’s Walls appeared in 1661, and two years later, when the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Letters was founded, he became secretary and server under Jean Baptiste Colbert, minister to King Louis XIV. During that time he began to write poems, discourses, odes and other kinds of writings highly enjoyed by princes and the king himself.
Among his most famous tales we find:
Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, My Thumb, Donkey skin, Patient Griselda, The Ridiculous Wishes, Diamonds and Toads and Ricky of the Tuft.
These tales have managed to survive in time and became favourite literature for kids since they are full of magic and imagination. The characters in the tales are princesses, witches, ogres, fairies, talking animals and charming princes. Moreover, in every story there is always a moral teaching and a happy end.
At the age of twenty-four Charles married Marie Guichon who died in 1678 during the labor of their daughter. The couple also had three more sons.
In 1687 Charles wrote The Century of Louis the Great and between 1688 and 1692, Parallel between Ancients and Moderns.
In 1995, when he lost his job as secretary, at the age of sixty-seven, his career gave a turning point and he began to write for children. He published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, with the subtitle Tales of Mother Goose. This book, which appeared under the name of one of his sons, Pierre Perrault, founded the beginning of the fairy tale as a new literary genre. In the folktales the author used different images he found around him and contrasted them with other ones from the world of fashion.
This author died in Paris in 1703 when he was seventy-five.