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A little over two hundred years ago, in December of 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of their Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), followed by a second volume in 1815. These original tales were then edited and amended by the brothers several times over subsequent decades, so that the tales we have come to know and love today through the likes of story books and Disney adaptations are a far cry from the raw, brutal and sometimes gruesome original tales – stories which are certainly not suitable for children.
But why were the original Grimm stories so… ‘grim’? And why did the Grimm Brothers decide to sanitize them? Amazingly, Jack Zipes’s The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is the first ever translation into English of these fascinating original editions.
Jack Zipes, a world authority on the fairy tale, takes us on a fascinating journey into the world of the Grimms’ original fairy tales, and the reasons for their obscurity today.