The Story of the Three Bears is a literary fairy tale. It was written by Robert Southey and first published in 1837 in a collection of his essays and stories. Southey's story is about an ugly old woman who enters the house of three bachelor bears during their absence. She eats their food, breaks a chair, and sleeps in a bed. She runs away when discovered. In time, the three bachelor bears became Papa, Mama, and Baby Bear. The old woman became a little girl called Goldilocks. The story supports several interpretations. It has been adapted to animated movies, a live action movie, and a short opera.
Three male bears—"a Little, Small, Wee Bear ... a Middle-sized Bear ... and a Great, Huge Bear"— live in a house in the woods. They each have a porridge pot, a chair, and a bed. One morning, they take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. A little old woman—"an impudent, bad old Woman"—enters the house during the bears' absence. She the little bear's porridge, breaks his little chair, and falls asleep in his little bed. The bears come home, and discover the old woman asleep. She wakes, sees the bears, jumps out the window, and fall to her death—never to be seen again.
Some people think the story of the three bears resembles parts of "Snow White", or a story from Norway about a princess and three princes dressed in bear skins. Charles Dickens included a story about goblins in his 1865 novel Our Mutual Friend that also resembles "The Three Bears". A story called "Scrapefoot" may be the original for "The Three Bears". This story has a fox (not a human) as the intruder in the bears' house.
In The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (2002), Harvard professor Maria Tatar writes that the story is sometimes regarded as a cautionary tale. It warns children about the dangers of wandering off into unknown places. She points out that the story is often presented today as one about what is "just right" for oneself. In earlier times however, the story was about interfering with someone else's property.