Jack and the Beanstalk

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"Jack and the Beanstalk" is an English fairy tale with ancient origins. It appeared as "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" in 1734 and as Benjamin Tabart's moralized "The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk" in 1807. Henry Cole, publishing under pen name Felix Summerly, popularized the tale in The Home Treasury (1845), and Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in English Fairy Tales (1890). Jacobs' version is most commonly reprinted today, and is believed to be closer to the oral versions than Tabart's because it lacks the moralizing. The antagonist is an ogre in some versions, including Jacob's, and is a giant in others. "Jack and the Beanstalk" is the best known of the "Jack tales", a series of stories featuring the archetypal English hero and stock character Jack. According to researchers at Durham University and Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the story originated more than five millennia ago in a time that correlates with the development of Proto-Italo-Celtic and Proto-Germanic, based...

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