Stories

Classic stories to read on any screen: folk tales from India — Jataka birth-stories of the Buddha, fables from the Panchatantra and tales told in Kashmir, the Deccan and the Punjab — and the best-known fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Each is the complete printed text of a public-domain edition, with a reading time, a larger-text switch and the editor’s own note on where it came from.

The Indian tales are from Indian Fairy Tales, selected and edited by the folklorist Joseph Jacobs and published in London by David Nutt in 1892, with pictures by John D. Batten. Jacobs gathered them from the Jatakas, the Panchatantra, the Katha-Sarit-Sagara of Somadeva, and from collectors of his day such as Flora Annie Steel, Richard Temple, Mary Frere and J. Hinton Knowles. His note on each story’s source is printed beneath it.

The Grimm tales are the English translation of the Brothers Grimm’s Household Tales by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes — the version that first made these stories known in English.

These are the texts as printed: nothing is shortened, modernised, retold or written by us. That keeps them honest to their sources, and it means some words and attitudes are those of the 1800s. The Indian tales keep the spellings of their time, such as Brahman and Raja.

Every book used here is in the public domain in India and elsewhere — their authors, translators and illustrator died long ago — so they can be read, printed and shared freely.

These are folk tales, not modern picture books: a wolf may eat a lamb and a trickster may be punished. Each page shows how long it takes to read, so you can choose a short fable for bedtime and save a longer tale for another day. “Larger text” makes any story easier to read on a phone held at arm’s length or read aloud together.

Yes — each is the complete text of the story as printed in its edition, with only the line breaks changed.

No request is made to read a story; they are part of the site. Once the site has been opened, pages you have visited stay available if your connection drops.

Yes. The texts and Batten’s pictures are in the public domain. Use the page’s address to share it.

Only when there is a Hindi text we have the right to publish. We will not machine-translate a story and present it as the original.