The story behind the story
Where these classics came from
Four tales old enough to belong to everybody. Here is where each one actually started, what the famous versions changed, and how to read it tonight.
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Robin Hood
Nobody wrote Robin Hood. He was sung about for a couple of hundred years before anyone bothered to write him down, which is why there is no single true version and never was.
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Peter Pan
Peter Pan was a play before he was a book, and a minor character in a novel for adults before either. The version most people picture is later still.
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The Wizard of Oz
Most people know the film. The book came first, in 1900, and it is a stranger and gentler thing than the version most of us grew up with.
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Aladdin
Aladdin is not in the oldest Arabian Nights manuscripts. How it got into the collection is one of the odder stories in publishing, and almost nothing you remember about it is in the original.
Looking for the stories themselves? They're in the free story library.