Grimm's Children's and Household Tales

In December 1812 the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmarchen (Children's and Household Tales) in Berlin, with 86 tales. A second volume followed in 1814 (dated 1815). Among the stories are Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin. The collection grew through seven editions, and the final one in 1857 contained 200 tales and 10 children's legends.¹²³

The Grimms were young scholars of language and literature in Kassel. Napoleon's occupation of German lands during these years made them eager to preserve what they saw as an authentically German poetic tradition, and the Romantic movement, especially the writers Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, encouraged them to collect. Their informants were mostly educated friends and neighbors, women of the Hassenpflug and Wild families and a storyteller named Dorothea Viehmann, and many of the stories had French and international origins. Over the years Wilhelm in particular revised the language, toned down sexual references and added moral lessons, while keeping much of the violence.¹²

The book became one of the most reprinted works in German and was translated widely, first into English in 1823. It helped found folklore as a field of study, with the Grimms' later work on historical linguistics, including Grimm's law and a German dictionary. It also gave modern children's literature and film, from Walt Disney's Snow White (1937) onward, a store of plots.¹²