FANTASY PIONEER

Found this interesting link by prolific science-fiction author, historian, and translator Brian Stableford on Mme. de Villeneuve, the French author who first set down the Beauty and the Beast story in print in 1740. Stableford celebrates Villeneuve (Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot) as a pioneer of sci-fi/fantasy, citing her La Belle et la Bete as " the eighteenth-century work that most closely resembles modern generic fantasy novels."

However, it's the heavily abridged and altered rewrite of the tale published in 1756 by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont that has become the standard version of the tale —  even though Stableford calls it  "a conscious and corrupt plagiarism of a far more innovative and interesting original." He praises the largely forgotten Villeneuve as "a far more complicated and more sophisticated writer than a superficial reading of the Beauty/Beast motif implies," and cites "the nature and intensity of her imagination."

I was aware of these dueling versions of the tale (but not in so much interesting detail!) when I wove both authors' names into Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge. In my book, the Beaumonts have more or less eclipsed the power and prestige of their Villeneuve cousins, claiming the Villeneuve reputation, like Beast's disputed chateau, for their own — as Mme. Beaumont claimed the Beauty/Beast story for her own, all but eclipsing the stalwart efforts of Mme. Villeneuve.

Obviously, Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont had a much more deft hand at self-promotion, judging by this fanciful portrait by contemporary illustrator Binette Schroeder for a 1986 edition of the tale! Did La Beaumont really keep a cheetah on a leash? Or is it all just metaphor?