Sleeping Beauty ("La Belle au Bois dormant" (The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood)) is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma Mre l'Oye ("Mother Goose Tales").[1]

While Perrault's version is better known, an older variant, the tale Sun, Moon, and Talia, was contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone (published 1634).[2] Professor J. R. R. Tolkien noted that Perrault's cultural presence is so pervasive that, when asked to name a fairy tale, most people will cite one of the eight stories in Perrault's collection.[3] Since Tolkien's generation, however, the most familiar Sleeping Beauty in the English speaking world has become the Walt Disney animated film (1959), which draws as much from the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ballet (Saint Petersburg, 1890) as from Perrault.