The Wild Swans

The Children’s Coloured Library consists of two boxed sets of fairy tales, one containing six tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the other, six by the Brothers Grimm, all of which are illustrated by Gerda Born. The sets were advertised in the Daily Gleaner as having over a hundred colour illustrations and sold for $1.95 per set. The books, originally published in German by the Austrian publisher Verlag Waldheim-Eberle in 1948, were also published in French and Spanish editions.

The Children's Coloured Library titles were repurposed by Brunswick Press as BeaverDime books in the 1960s and 1970s. These republished books were stripped of their original title pages and endpapers. All reference to the illustrator’s name was also removed.  

Availability: Extremely rare. University of New Brunswick (UNB) Libraries holds two complete sets of the Andersen tales, and one book (Snow White and Rose Red) from the Brothers Grimm set. The New Brunswick Public Library Service own one copy of The Flying Trunk. Copies are extremely rare in the used book trade.