ABSTRACT
Although he wrote some of the most innovative fairy tales of the nineteenth century and was the first significant American writer of this genre, Frank Stockton is hardly known today. This is not to say that he has fallen into total oblivion. During the 1960s an anthology of his stories, A Story-Teller's Pack (1968), was published, and three of his best fairy tales, The Griffin and the Minor Canon (1963), The Bee-Man of Orn (1964), and Old Pipes and the Dryad (1968), were illustrated by such gifted artists as Maurice Sendak and Catherine Hanley. Yet, these publications represent only a small part of the achievement of Stockton as a writer of fairy tales. In fact, during his lifetime he was regarded as one of America's most popular novelists and held in high esteem due to his unusual works of fantasy.
