Grimms’ Fairy Tales

A little about the story

Enchanted forests, troublesome bargains, disguised visitors, and unlikely helpers fill this selection of tales associated with Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A person who seems powerless may possess the one quality an adventure requires, while a comfortable household can become dangerous with the arrival of a stranger. Some stories will feel immediately familiar; others reveal how much stranger and more abrupt traditional tales can be than the versions remembered from modern adaptations.

The collection moves quickly between wonder, comedy, danger, and sharply delivered consequences. Its recurring patterns invite readers to notice how promises work, why kindness to an unimportant creature can matter, and how appearances mislead both the foolish and the confident. These are not chapters of a single continuous adventure, but separate worlds joined by a common storytelling language. Read together, they offer an engaging glimpse of the tales the Grimm brothers collected and revised, and of the English translations through which many later readers first encountered them.

Things You May Not Know About Grimms' Fairy Tales

• Collected rather than simply invented. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm gathered and edited traditional material, drawing on storytellers and earlier literary sources rather than composing every tale from scratch.
• A translated selection. The preparer’s note identifies Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes as the translators on whose work this English collection is based.
• Familiar tales have other names. The contents use titles such as Briar Rose and Ashputtel, names readers may associate with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
• Not the entire Grimm collection. This volume is a selection, so its contents should not be mistaken for every story in the brothers’ larger published collection.
• Animals have active roles. The Traveling Musicians, Old Sultan, and several other tales give animals their own interests and decisions, rather than using them only as decoration.