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Charles Perrault
1628-1703
Historical Figure
He gave us Cinderella and Puss in Boots. Charles Perrault, a man of letters, published his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697, a collection of eight tales that established the literary fairy tale.
Long before the tales, he served the state: tasked by Colbert with overseeing Louis XIV's artistic policy starting in 1663, he became controller general of the king's building works.
In 1687, he sparked the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns by reading his poem Le Siecle de Louis le Grand to the Academie, positioning himself as the leader of the Moderns' camp.
