Grimms' Fairy Tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812
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This is a large English selection from the Children's and Household Tales gathered by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Hansel and Gretel, Little Red-Cap, Snowdrop, Rumpelstiltskin, Ashputtel, Briar Rose, The Fisherman and His Wife, The Frog-Prince and dozens more. They are short, plain stories of poor woodcutters, wicked stepmothers, talking animals, clever tailors and lucky fools. Many open in a forest or at a spinning wheel and end with a marriage or a punishment. Reading them together shows how a folk tradition and a scholarly project became children's reading.
Where it happens
Through time
- 1802Jacob begins at the University of Marburg; Wilhelm joins a year later.1
- 1812First volume published on 20 December with 86 stories.12
- 1815Second volume adds 70 more tales.1
- 1825Small edition of 50 tales for child readers appears.1
- 1857Seventh edition, with 210 tales, is the last in the brothers' lifetimes.12
Who is in it, and behind it
Jacob Grimm collector
Elder brother; turned from law to German literature and later wrote the German Grammar that made the family name internationally known.12
Wilhelm Grimm collector
Younger brother who completed his law degree at Marburg and took up German literature.12
Friedrich Carl von Savigny mentor
Marburg law professor and founder of the historical school, whose library the brothers used.1
Achim von Arnim friend
Writer who with Brentano wanted to publish folk tales and asked the brothers to collect them.1
Clemens Brentano friend
Writer who with Arnim urged the brothers to collect oral tales.1
Ludwig Emil Grimm illustrator
Brother who illustrated the 1825 small edition of 50 tales for children.1
Joseph Jacobs successor
English folklorist inspired by the Grimms, who said what Perrault began, the Grimms completed.1
Jack Zipes scholar
Believes the Grimms changed mothers to stepmothers because they held motherhood sacred.1
What it is about
Folklore as national history
The brothers saw the tales as the pure form of German culture, a view that shaped romantic nationalism across Europe.1
Poverty and hunger
Many tales begin with famine, a poor woodcutter or a miller short of money, so want drives the plot.12
Wicked stepmothers
Later editions replaced mothers with stepmothers, shifting blame for cruelty in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel.1
Cunning and luck
The weak win by wit or luck: the tailor, the youngest son, the child who tricks the witch.2
A book rewritten for children
Added violence for villains while sexual references were cut, as the collection was reshaped for the nursery.1
In its own words
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread.
Nibble, nibble, gnaw, Who is nibbling at my little house?’ The children answered: ‘The wind, the wind, The heaven-born wind,’ and went on eating without disturbing themselves.
There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a pigsty, close by the seaside.
Oh! grandmother,’ she said, ‘what big ears you have!’ ‘The better to hear you with, my child,’ was the reply. ‘But, grandmother, what big eyes you have!’ she said. ‘The better to see you with, my dear.’ ‘But, grandmother, what large hands you have!’
Tell me, glass, tell me true! Of all the ladies in the land, Who is fairest, tell me, who?’ And the glass had always answered: ‘Thou, queen, art the fairest in all the land.’ But Snowdrop grew more and more beautiful; and when she was seven years old she was as bright as the day, and fairer than the queen herself.
Little does my lady dream Rumpelstiltskin is my name!”
Now that very day the hundred years were ended; and as the prince came to the thicket he saw nothing but beautiful flowering shrubs, through which he went with ease, and they shut in after him as thick as ever.
The shape of the book
63 chapters, 100,644 words. Point at a bar.
How it came to be here
The brothers began collecting in the years after their studies, helped by friends in Kassel and by old books, and with the encouragement of Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. The first volume appeared on 20 December 1812 with 86 stories, and a second followed in 1815. By the seventh edition of 1857 the collection held 210 tales. Early critics said the book was not fit for children, so the Grimms softened some tales, turning wicked mothers into stepmothers and removing sexual references, while making punishments harsher. UNESCO lists the collection in its Memory of the World register.
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Sources
Text: PG 2591. US public domain (Project Gutenberg licence).