page_title: Puss in Boots
section_title: Publication
hierarchical_section_title: Puss in Boots / Publication
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail from a portrait of Charles Perrault (1628-1703), a French architect (oil on canvas; 1.34 x 1.00 m). Lallemand presented this portrait on 13 May 1672, along with his Portrait of Gédéon Berbier du Mets, in order to gain admittance to the Academy. The names of the sitters were communicated to him on 25 April 1671, so the painting dates to this period. Lallemand worked from a 1665 painting of Charles Perrault by Charles Le Brun (engraved by Étienne Baudet in 1675). Français&#160;: Détail d'un portrait par Philippe Lallemand
context_page_description: "Master Cat, or The Booted Cat", commonly known in English as "Puss in Boots", is an Italian and later European literary fairy tale about an anthropomorphic cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master.
  The oldest telling is by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, who included it in his The Facetious Nights of Straparola in XIV–XV. Another version was published in 1634 by Giambattista Basile with the title Cagliuso, and a tale was written in French at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault, a retired civil servant and member of the Académie française. There is a version written by Girolamo Morlini, from whom Straparola used various tales in The Facetious Nights of Straparola. The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault called Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The book was an instant success and remains popular.
  Perrault's Histoires has had considerable impact on world culture.
context_section_description: The oldest record of written history was published in Venice by the Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola in his The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550–53) in XIV-XV. His original title was Costantino Fortunato (lit. Lucky Costantino).
  Le Maître Chat, ou le Chat Botté was later published by Barbin in Paris in January 1697 in a collection of tales called Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The collection included "La Belle au bois dormant" ("The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood"), "Le petit chaperon rouge" ("Little Red Riding Hood"), "La Barbe bleue" ("Blue Beard"), "Les Fées" ("The Enchanted Ones", or "Diamonds and Toads"), "Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre" ("Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper"), "Riquet à la Houppe" ("Riquet with the Tuft"), and "Le Petit Poucet" ("Hop o' My Thumb"). The book displayed a frontispiece depicting an old woman telling tales to a group of three children beneath a placard inscribed "CONTES DE MA MERE L'OYE" (Tales of Mother Goose). The book was an instant success.
  Le Maître Chat first was translated into English as "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots" by Robert Samber in 1729 and published in London for J. Pote and R. Montagu with its original companion tales in Histories, or Tales of Past Times, By M. Perrault. The book was advertised in June 1729 as being "very entertaining and instructive for children". A frontispiece similar to that of the first French edition appeared in the English edition launching the Mother Goose legend in the English-speaking world. Samber's translation has been described as "faithful and straightforward, conveying attractively the concision, liveliness and gently ironic tone of Perrault's prose, which itself emulated the direct approach of oral narrative in its elegant simplicity." Since that publication, the tale has been translated into various languages and published around the world.
caption: Detail of a portrait of Charles Perrault by Philippe Lallemand
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