Beauty and the Beast ("La Belle et la Bête") 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 américaine,et les contes marins in 1740.The best-known written version was an abridgement of M.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 élèves; an English translation appeared in 1757
