How to Tell Stories to Children

Inside this edition

Every LitLab edition is illustrated from the text itself — the world of the book mapped, its people drawn, its scenes staged. 15 plates are open to everyone in this book; here are 8 of them.

• The World in 1905The world beyond the book: what was happening elsewhere on Earth around 1905, the age this story belonged to — not the tale itself, but the world it lived in.
• The Cup and the Cellar, 1905Not from the story but from its age: the drink really had around 1905, drawn from the historical record.
• The World of Story-Telling: how the book's ideas connect, from the free teller to the joy-giving tale.
• The Story-Tellers: Sara Cone Bryant and the great tellers and authors she draws on.
• Profile: Hans Christian Andersen — the whimsical voice behind The Ugly Duckling.
• John Ruskin — the critic who wrote The King of the Golden River.
• Sara Cone Bryant, free and unbound, holding a room under the spell of a told story.
• The age-old art: a street story-teller and the older tellers from whom the tradition descends.

This edition

Title

How to Tell Stories to Children

Author

Sara Cone Bryant (born 1873)

First published

1905

Illustrated plates

27 original artworks · 15 open to everyone

Chapters

11 · about 56,082 words

Reading time

3 h 44 min

Language

EN

Formats

Read online · EPUB and PDF download with a subscription

Publisher

LitLab — The Illustrated Classics

On LitLab since

August 2026

Rights

Text in the public domain. Illustrations and edition © LitLab.

Source text

Project Gutenberg #474