Who Wrote the “Three Little Pigs”?
The earliest known version of the folktale “The Three Little Pigs” was written by James Orchard Halliwell and printed in the 1849 book “Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales.” A later version, penned by Joseph Jacobs for “English Fairy Tales” printed in 1898, credits Halliwell as a source.
The folktale predates the printed versions considerably. The story “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids,” the fifth tale of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” printed in 1812, bears close resemblance to “The Three Little Pigs.” The “Three Little Pigs” tales are classified as story type number 124 in the Aarne-Thompson folklore classification system, which helps folklorists find common patterns in different folktales. The Grimm story is closely classified as story type number 123.
