Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–1875). Danish author of novels, plays, poems, travel narratives and short stories. In fairy tale collections published between 1835 and 1870 Andersen fused materials borrowed from traditional Danish folklore with his own elaborate literary inventions, creating a distinctive form of literary fairy tale. His stories include ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘The Princess and the Pea’, ‘The Emperor's New Clothes’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and ‘The Snow Queen’.

Apollonius Rhodius (now more commonly anglicised as Apollonius of Rhodes) third century bce Greek author of the epic poem The Argonautica (Voyage of Argo) upon which Lang partially relies for his account of the Jason myth.

Apuleius (c.125–c.180) (sometimes given the forename Lucius) a Roman traveller and writer of Berber descent from the colony of Numidia in North Africa. He is best known as the author of the satirical prose romance, Metamorphoses, generally referred to as The Golden Ass, in which the protagonist undergoes a series of picaresque adventures after having accidentally transformed himself into a donkey through the practice of witchcraft. The Golden Ass includes a number of intercalated narratives, amongst them the story of Cupid and Psyche in Books 4–6, narrated by an old woman to comfort a young woman who has been abducted by thieves.

Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine D’ (1650/1–1705), French novelist, travel writer and fairy tale writer. She was married at 16 to a much older man, and forced to flee France following a scandal relating to her marriage. During her exile she claimed to have travelled in Spain and England, and later published memoirs of her experiences, including the popular Memoires de la cour d'Espagne, Relation du voyage d'Espagne (1690/1; Memoirs of the Court of Spain, Account of the Voyage to Spain). By 1690 she had been allowed to return to Paris, and set up a salon at which various regular entertainments took place, including the reading of fairy tales. D'Aulnoy published two collections of fairy tales Les Contes des Fées (1697; Tales of Fairies) and Contes Nouveaux, ou Les Fées à la Mode (1698; New Tales, or Fairies in Fashion). She is credited with having initiated the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French vogue for fairy tale writing, and with introducing the term ‘Fairy Tale’, courtesy of a translation of the French phrase ‘contes des fées’ into English.