In 1695, when he was 67, Perrault lost his position as secretary and decided to dedicate himself to his children. In 1697 he published "Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals" ("Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé"), subtitled "Tales of Mother Goose" ("Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye"). (The spelling of the name is with "y" although modern French uses only an "i".) This "Mother Goose" has never been identified as a person, but used to refer to popular and rural storytelling traditions in proverbial phrases of the time. (Source : "Dictionnaire de l'Académie", 1694, quoted by Nathalie Froloff in her edition of the "Tales" (Gallimard, Folio, Paris, 1999.- p. 10).) These tales, based on European popular tradition and often translated from originals by the Brothers Grimm, became very popular in France. Of all his abundant literary production in verse and in prose (odes, epic poetry, essays, etc.) these little stories for children are the only works still read today, and he is often credited as the founder of the modern fairy tale genre. Naturally, his work reflects awareness of earlier fairy tales written in the salons, most notably by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, who coined the phrase "fairy tale" and wrote tales as early as 1690.