Tales from Shakespeare

The cover page of this edition has been taken from 1922 frontispiece illustration for Tales from Shakespeare.

Tales from Shakespeare is an English children's book written by brother and sister Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807.

The book is designed to make the stories of Shakespeare's plays familiar to the young. Mary Lamb was responsible for the comedies, while Charles wrote the tragedies; they wrote the preface between them.

The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent are has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided.