This article shows how the French governess Marie Leprince de
Beaumont, who read, adapted and rewrote the Contes de ma mère
l’Oye for her young pupils in London, played a key role in repurposing
the fairy tale as a pedagogical tool during the Enlightenment.
Supported by a network of progressive female aristocrats eager to
promote the education of girls, Beaumont published her work of
moral instruction in the Magasin des enfants (1756), a book translated
into English the following year and soon famous throughout
Europe. The manual contains thirteen tales including La Belle et la
Bête, loosely based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s
lengthy conte précieux. A comparison of the French Magasin and its
English translation demonstrates how questions of genre and gender
are subtly reworked from one language and book project to another.
The reception of the literary fairy tale in England thus attests
to the role played by mediators who reoriented the genre for
young readers during this period of intense cultural exchanges between
France and England. It sheds light on a turning point in the
history of the genre and on the transnational, translational and
transformative dimension of cultural transfers more generally.