Southey's bears have porridge, but Mure's have milk Southey's old woman has no motive for entering the house, but Mure's old woman is piqued when her courtesy visit is rebuffed Southey's old woman runs away when discovered, but Mure's old woman is impaled on the steeple of St Paul's Cathedral. In 1813, for example, Southey was telling the story to friends, and in 1831 Eleanor Mure fashioned a handmade booklet about the three bears and the old woman for her nephew Horace Broke's birthday. The story of the three bears was in circulation before the publication of Southey's tale. Hart (after 'C.J.'), and was reissued in 1848 with Southey identified as the story's author. Nicol's version was illustrated with engravings by B. Southey was delighted with Nicol's effort to bring more exposure to the tale, concerned children might overlook it in The Doctor. The same year Southey's tale was published, the story was versified by editor George Nicol, who acknowledged the anonymous author of The Doctor as 'the great, original concocter' of the tale. The story was first recorded in narrative form by English writer and poet Robert Southey, and first published anonymously as 'The Story of the Three Bears' in 1837 in a volume of his writings called The Doctor. Wee Bear finds his empty bowl, his broken chair, and the old woman sleeping in his bed and cries, 'Somebody has been lying in my bed, and here she is!' The old woman wakes, is chased out of the house by the huge bear and is never seen again. The end of the tale is reached when the bears return. Prowling about, she finds the bears' beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. She is impudent, bad-mannered, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty, and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction. She has been sent out by her family because she is a disgrace to them. An old woman approaches the bears' house. One day they make porridge for breakfast, but it is too hot to eat, so they decide to take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. Each of these 'bachelor' bears has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed.

Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. In Robert Southey's version of the tale ('The Story of the Three Bears'), three anthropomorphic bears – 'a little, small, wee bear, a middle-sized bear, and a great, huge bear' – live together in a house in the woods.

Illustration in 'The Story of the Three Bears' second edition, 1839, published by W. 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' is one of the most popular fairy tales in the English language. The story has elicited various interpretations and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media. What was originally a frightening oral tale became a cosy family story with only a hint of menace. The second version replaces the old woman with a young girl named Goldilocks, and the third and by far best-known version replaces the bachelor trio with a family of three. When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again. She eats some of their porridge, sits down on one of their chairs and breaks it, and sleeps in one of their beds. The original version of the tale tells of an obscene old woman who enters the forest home of three anthropomorphic bachelor bears while they are away. ' Goldilocks and the Three Bears' (originally titled ' The Story of the Three Bears') is a 19th-century English fairy tale of which three versions exist. Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918, in English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel

Story of goldilocks