Jacob Ludwig Carl (1785-1863) and his brother Wilhelm Carl (1786-1859) are best known for their collection of more than two hundred fairy and folk tales. These tales include such well known favourites as ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Frog King’, ‘Briar Rose’, ‘Snow White’, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and ‘Rapunzel’.

The brothers were born in Hanau, in the then independent German state of Hesse. They studied law at the University of Marburg where they became interested in German folk poetry. In 1805, two of their friends published a collection of German folk songs, together with an appeal for the gathering of popular tales from the people while they were still remembered. The brothers began collecting such tales the following year. Their sources included friends and neighbours and old men and women in the villages, and even a few stories from written sources even though it was oral tales that the brothers considered crucial to collect and write down. In 1812 they published the first volume of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children and Household Tales). This contained 86 stories. They brought out the second volume in 1815; this contained 70 tales.

Over the next forty years, the Grimms revised their material constantly, making extensive changes in content and style, and between 1812-15 and 1857, they published seven editions of their tales. Each edition was quite different from the last, so that the final edition, which is also the best-known and often regarded as the ‘definitive’ edition was radically different from the first. Between 1812 to 1857, the brothers removed several of the original tales, replaced them with different versions and even added fifty new stories. The stories in the first edition are closer to the oral tradition the brothers sought to preserve and are therefore often brusque and even brutal in their telling of the darker aspects of life and human nature, while those in the final edition, honed over the years by Wilhelm to suit the tastes of a growing readership, are more literary in tone and style.

In collecting these tales, the Grimms showed the way to other folklorists across Europe, inspiring them to collect and preserve the fast-vanishing tales of their oral traditions. Their seminal contribution to folklore has been recognised the world over, and their Kinder- und Hausmärchen is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Registry.

Their fairy tales made the Grimms famous. Their books became second in popularity only to the Bible in German-speaking lands. They were translated into other languages, and became so popular that collectors in other countries came across the Grimms’ stories read by the people in cheap translations and quickly absorbed into their own folklore.

Despite the fame and popularity their tales achieved, the Grimms were always conscious of the criticism that fairytales was not a serious enough subject for scholars to pursue. They also worked on a book of German grammar, and a German dictionary. When Wilhelm died, the dictionary had reached as far as ‘D’. Four years later, at Jacob’s death, the dictionary had progressed to ‘F’. The dictionary was not completed till a hundred years later. (The portrait shown above comes from their German dictionary.)

By the twentieth century, their tales had become the most famous collection of folk and fairy tales in the western world. They appeared in innumerable translations and retellings, including as some of Disney’s best-loved animation films. Today, the tales continue to enchant and inspire, and new translations continue to appear: in 2012, two hundred years after it first appeared, Jack Zipes translated the first edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, making available in English for the very first time, all the 156 original stories contained in it.

The tales presented here are from the 1884 translation by Margaret Hunt, of the final, 1857 edition of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Hunt’s translation contains all the 200 stories of the 1857 edition and is regarded as faithful to the original German. Margaret Hunt’s translation is now in the public domain.