Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was a French writer and courtier. Trained as a lawyer, he spent twenty years as a senior official under Colbert, helping to direct the artistic policy of Louis XIV, and was elected to the Académie française in 1671. In the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns he led the Moderns against Boileau. Late in life he wrote the verse tales Griselidis, Donkey-skin and The Ridiculous Wishes and then, under his son's name, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697), the collection containing Little Red Riding-Hood, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Blue Beard that fixed the fairy tale as a literary form.