Jack and the Beanstalk

In this simple but ever popular tale, the hero Jack, a poor widow's feckless son, sells their cow for five magic beans, which his mother angrily throws away. By next day, their stems reach up to the sky; climbing up, Jack finds the castle of a man-eating giant, whose wife befriends and hides him. Three times he steals magic golden treasures; the third time he is discovered and the giant chases him, but he chops down the beanstalk and the giant dies.

There are allusions showing the story was well known by the early 18th century, but the first surviving texts are in two chapbooks, one in verse and one in prose, both published in 1807; they differ in several details. The former is summarized and the latter reprinted in Opie and Opie, 1974: 162-74. In 1890 Joseph Jacobs printed a far livelier version based on the way his nurse used to tell it to him as a child in Australia around 1860 (Jacobs, 1890: 57-67; also in Briggs, 1970-1: A. i. 316-21; Philip, 1992:1-10).