Google Doodle Celebrates Charles Perrault’s 388th Birthday

Charles Perrault, the 17th century French fairytale writer, was honored by Google Doodle Tuesday.

Charles Perrault Google Doodle

Google celebrated what would have been Perrault’s 388th birthday with a doodle that features references to Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots. Perrault had also penned the familiar tales of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. The stories were contained within Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, subtitled Tales of Mother Goose, which he published in 1695 at the age of 67.

Perrault, who had worked as a court official before dedicating himself to writing, predates the famous Grimm Brothers with his tales by roughly 200 years. He essentially created the genre of “literary fairy tales” and penned his stories, in part, for the enjoyment of ladies at court.

Over the years, the fairy tales popularized by Perrault and later the Grimm Brothers – who were honored with a Google Doodle a few years back – have been reinvented numerous times. Notably, Disney has used traditional fairytales for their princess movies. The studio has made use of the Sleeping Beauty story multiple times – in the original 1959 animated version, Tangled in 2012 and in the spinoff centered on the villain in Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, which came out in 2014 starring Angelina Jolie.