The Last Petal

We're on to the first English version of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale! Distinguishing features: naïve Beauty, stage-stealing Dream Prince, small instances of simple magic, and a surprisingly-subverted ending.

There's a reason most sources point to this adaptation as the "original" Beauty and the Beast, even though Villeneuve's came first.

We start with the very first published version of Beauty and the Beast: Madame Barbot de Villeneuve's French La Belle et la Bête, from 1740.