Jack And The Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk is an English folktale. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer, and is known under a number of versions.

Benjamin Tabart's moralized version of 1807 is the first appearance in print, but "Felix Summerly" (Henry Cole) popularized it in The Home Treasury (1842), and Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in English Fairy Tales (1890).

Jacobs's version is most commonly reprinted today and is believed to more closely adhere to the oral versions than Tabart's, because it lacks the moralizing of that version.The origin of Jack and the Beanstalk is unclear. However, Sir Francis Palgrave once wrote that it was most likely that the tale arrived with the Viking boats.

The earliest printed edition which has survived is the 1807 book The History of Jack and the Bean Stalk, printed by Benjamin Tabart, although the story was already in existence sometime before this, as a burlesque of the story entitled The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean was included in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire.In the classic version of the tale, the giant is unnamed, but many plays based on the story name him as Blunderbore; a giant of that name also appears in Jack the Giant Killer.

The giant's "Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!" was included in William Shakespeare's King Lear.