About this book
First published in German in 1812 · This English translation, 1884 · Grew from 86 tales to around 200 · Translated into more than 100 languages
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were scholars of language and early German literature rather than storytellers. They began gathering folk tales in the first years of the 1800s, in part to preserve an oral tradition they feared was fading, and they drew them from friends, acquaintances and older written sources. Contrary to the popular picture of two men roaming the countryside, most of the people who told them these stories came from their own educated circle. The first volume appeared in 1812 with 86 tales, and the brothers kept enlarging and revising the collection across their lives until it held around 200.
These are the stories much of the world now means by the words fairy tale: Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin. The collection has been translated into more than a hundred languages and has never gone out of print. In 2005 the original German edition was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register.
The text on this shelf is Margaret Hunt's complete English translation of 1884, and our tales carry Walter Crane's 1882 illustrations as frontispieces.
Chapters
A long one: read it a chapter a night.
Public domain. Source text via Project Gutenberg, PG boilerplate removed. View the source edition