Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bete) is a traditional fairy tale (type 425C -- search for a lost husband -- in the Aarne-Thompson classification). The first published version of the fairy tale was a meandering rendition by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune americaine, et les contes marins in 1740. The best-known written version was an abridgement of Mme Villeneuve's work published in 1756 by Mme Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, in Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses elèves; an English translation appeared in 1757.Variants of the tale are known across Europe. In France, for example, Zemire et Azor is an operatic version of the story of Beauty and the Beast written by Marmontel and composed by Gretry in 1771. It had enormous success well into the 19th century. It is based on Mme Leprince de Beaumont's version of the tale. (Quote from wikipedia.org)About the AuthorJeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (1711 - 1780)Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (born Rouen, France in 1711; died Chavanod, Savoie, in 1780) was a French novelist. Her first work, a moralistic novel, The Triumph of Truth (le Triomphe de la Verite) was published in 1748.She was first married in 1743, but this marriage was annulled after two years and in 1746 she left France to become a governess in London. She continued her literary career by publishing many school books (education complète, ou Abrege de l'histoire universelle, 1762; le Mentor moderne, 1773). She then began to publish collections she called "magazines" of educational and moral stories and poems for children. She was among the first writers to specifically write fairy tales for children.Over the next 3