About the book
Household Tales / translated by Margaret Hunt
The Brothers Grimm are probably the best known story tellers in the world. Many years have passed since the time Jackob and Wilhelm Grimm released their "Children's and household tales". The first Volume of Grimm's fairy tales was released in 1812, and the second - in 1814. The first edition and was very modest, both in appearance and capacity - there were only 83 fairy tales, compared to the 200 we know today.
The foreword to the collection of the Brothers Grimm was signed on October 18th, 1812. The booklet was highly appraised in this era of spectacular bloom of romance, when the German national consciousness was formed and nationalist aspirations were awakening.
Brothers Grimm kept updating their collection with newly gathered and recorded fairy tales. In their lifetime the fairy tale collection was translated into almost all European languages, while the German version already had six editions. This was The Grimms first experience of scientific studies and process of folklore and their first major success. For their exceptional scientific achievements modern researchers call them "fathers and founders of German philology."
About the Auhtor
Jakob Grimm, 1785-1863 & Wilhelm Carl Grimm, 1786-1859
The Brothers Grimm (German: Die Brüder Grimm or Die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (24 February 1786 – 16 December 1859), were German academics best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales, which became popular.[1] Jacob also did academic work in linguistics, related to how the sounds in words shift over time (Grimm's law), and together they wrote a German dictionary.
They are among the best-known story tellers of folk tales from Europe, and their work popularized such tales as "Rumpelstiltskin", "Snow White", "Rapunzel", "Cinderella", "Hansel and Gretel", "Little Red Riding Hood", and "The Frog Prince".
Jacob remained a bachelor. On 15 May 1825, Wilhelm married Henriette Dorothea Wild (also known as Dortchen). She was a pharmacist's daughter and a childhood friend who had told the brothers the story of "Little Red Riding Hood". Wilhelm and Henriette had four children, of whom three survived infancy: Herman, Jacob, and Auguste. Even after Wilhelm's marriage, the brothers stayed close. They lived as an extended family under one roof with little conflict.
Wilhelm died in Berlin on 16 December 1859. Jacob continued work on the dictionary and related projects until his death in Berlin on 20 September 1863. The brothers were buried in the St. Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin. The Grimms helped foment a nationwide democratic public opinion in Germany and are cherished as the progenitors of the German democratic movement.[citation needed] Its revolution of 1848/1849 was crushed by the Kingdom of Prussia, which established a constitutional monarchy.
