Maria Adelmann Books in Order

"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Claude Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale is about a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.