Grimm's Fairy Tales

✍ Scribed by Brothers Grimm

• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
• Year: 1909
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 902 KB
• Edition: Classics (2003), Illustrated (Page
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1411432274

✦ Synopsis

{ Oct 2020 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, content separation, and epub format error checking. }

Paperback, 508 pages
Published 1909
Barnes & Noble Classics (2003), Illustrated
(Page order rearranged to get to stories quickly)
Goodreads Best Books of the 19th Century
Introduction by Elizabeth Dalton
Authors: Jacob Grimm,Wilhelm Grimm
With the words “Once upon a time,” the Brothers Grimm transport readers to a timeless realm where witches, giants, princesses, kings, fairies, goblins, and wizards fall in love, try to get rich, quarrel with their neighbors, and have magical adventures of all kinds—and in the process reveal essential truths about human nature.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales—a trove of delights and insights that has been entertaining both young and old since the early 1800s—is literature at its most basic and wonderful. With the famous words “Once upon a time,” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm immediately transport readers to a magical realm where witches, giants, princesses, kings, fairies, goblins, and wizards walk the earth.

When the Brothers Grimm set out to collect stories, their goal was to preserve Germanic folktales—not amuse young children. The hard life of central European peasants was reflected in the often violent and cruel nature of their folktales. However, once the brothers saw how the tales entranced young readers, they began softening some of the harsher aspects to make them more suitable for children. Now beloved the world over, Grimm’s Fairy Tales is a cornerstone of Western culture.

This collection of over 120 of Grimm’s most beloved tales includes such timeless classics as “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Hansel and Grethel,” “Rapunzel,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “The Frog Prince.” Rich in sense and imagery, these legendary stories still have the power to surprise and enchant.

“It is hardly too much to say,” remarked W. H. Auden, “that these tales rank next to the Bible in importance.”

Unlike Andersen, the Grimms did not invent new tales but collected old ones, with the intention of preserving the oral tradition of the German peasantry. Whether in fact they fulfilled that intention has been questioned. Their tales do afford a glimpse of a world of castles and forests, nobles and peasants, superstitious beliefs and primitive practices that suggest origins at least as old as feudal Europe, and often much older. Some of the tales have been traced back through the centuries by way of earlier versions until they disappear into prehistoric times.