WONDER TALES
Six French Stories of Enchantment
edited by Marina Warner
Wonder Tales ($22.00; Oct. 1996; 256 pp.; 0-374-29281-7): A lavishly entertaining collection of French fairy tales, dating from the 17th century and including both racy revisions of traditional folk materials and excerpts from long-forgotten romans and romances. British editor and writer Warner (From the Beast to the Blonde, 1995, etc.), whose credentials as a scholar in this field are unimpeachable, offers an amusing and instructive Introduction that's as much fun as the volume's choicer inclusions: ``The Great Green Worm,'' a raffish tale of metamorphosis by Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, and ``Starlight'' and ``Bearskin,'' two lithe and witty fictions ``attributed to'' the once-notorious demimondaine Henriette-Julie de Murat (whose biography one hopes Warner is already at work on).