Table of Contents
From the Pages ofGrimm’s Fairy Tales
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Brothers Grimm
The World of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Their Fairy Tales
Introduction
The Frog Prince
A Tale of One Who Traveled to Learn What Shivering Meant
The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats
Faithful John
The Musicians of Bremen
The Twelve Brothers
The Little Brother and Sister
The Three Little Men in the Wood
The Three Spinsters
Hansel and Grethel
The Three Snake-Leaves
Rapunzel
The White Snake
The Fisherman and His Wife
The Valiant Little Tailor
The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean
Cinderella
The Riddle
Old Mother Frost
The Seven Crows
Little Red Riding Hood
The Singing Bone
The Giant with the Three Golden Hairs
The Handless Maiden
Clever Alice
The Table, the Ass, and the Stick
Thumbling
The Wedding of Mrs. Fox
FIRST TALE.
A SECOND ACCOUNT.
The Little Elves
FIRST STORY.
SECOND STORY.
THIRD STORY.
The Robber Bridegroom
Herr Korbes
The Godfather
The Godfather Death
The Golden Bird
The Travels of Thumbling
The Feather Bird
The Six Swans
Briar Rose
King Thrush-Beard
The Twelve Hunters
Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn
Rumpelstiltskin
Roland
The Juniper Tree
The Little Farmer
Jorinde and Joringel
Fir - Apple
Catherine and Frederick
The Two Brothers
How Six Traveled Through the World
The Queen Bee
The Three Feathers
The Golden Goose
Allerleirauh
The Three Luck-Children
The Wolf and the Fox
The Pink
The Clever Grethel
The Gold Children
The Water-Sprite
Brother Lustig
Hans in Luck
The Fox and the Geese
The Young Giant
The Dwarfs
The Peasant’s Wise Daughter
The Three Birds
The Raven
Old Hildebrand
The Water of Life
The Spirit in the Bottle
The Two Wanderers
The Experienced Huntsman
Professor Know-All
Bearskin
Hans the Hedgehog
The Jew Among Thorns
The Goose Girl
The Valiant Tailor
The Blue Light
The Three Army Surgeons
Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful
The Shoes Which Were Danced to Pieces
The Three Brothers
The Evil Spirit and His Grandmother
The Idle Spinner
The Donkey Cabbages
Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eyes, and Little Three-Eyes
The Six Servants
The Old Woman in the Wood
The Man of Iron
The Iron Stove
The Little Lamb and the Little Fish
Simeli Mountain
Going Out A-Traveling
The Little Ass
The Old Griffin
Snow-White and Rose-Red
The Turnip
Star Dollars
The Shreds
The Glass Coffin
Lazy Harry
Strong Hans
Master Cobblersawl
The Nix in the Pond
The Presents of the Little Folk
The Goose-Girl at the Well
The Poor Boy in the Grave
The True Bride
The Hare and the Hedgehog
The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle
The Robber and His Sons
The Master-Thief
Old Rinkrank
The Ball of Crystal
Jungfrau Maleen
The Boots Made of Buffalo-Leather
The Golden Key
Inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Comments & Questions
For Further Reading
Alphabetical Listing of the Fairy Tales
From the Pages of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
In the olden time, when wishing was having, there lived a King, whose daughters were all beautiful; but the youngest was so exceedingly beautiful that the Sun himself, although he saw her very often, was surprised whenever she came out into the sunshine. (page 15)
“Dear children, I am going away into the wood; be on your guard against the Wolf, for if he comes here, he will eat you all up—skin, hair, and all.” (page 26)
Witches have red eyes, and cannot see very far; but they have a fine sense of smelling, like wild beasts, so that they know when children approach them. When Hansel and Grethel came near the witch’s house she laughed wickedly. (page 61)
“Rapunzel! Rapunzel!
Let down your hair!” (page 67)
The step-mother and the two sisters were amazed and white with rage, but the Prince took Cinderella upon his horse and rode away.
(page 93)
One day the grandmother presented the little girl with a red velvet riding hood; and as it fitted her very well, she would never wear anything else; and so she was called Little Red Riding Hood.
(page 101)
After seven months a child was born, who, although he was perfectly formed in all his limbs, was not actually bigger than one’s thumb. So they said to one another that it had happened just as they wished; and they called the child “Thumbling.” (page 131)
“Oh mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of us all?” (page 178)
“Are you called Rumpelstiltskin?” (page 194)
There was once upon a time an excessively proud Princess, who proposed a puzzle to every one who came a-courting; and he who did not solve it was sent away with ridicule and scorn. (page 357)
The four and seventieth time, the Hare was unable to run any more. In the middle of the course he stopped and dropped down quite exhausted, and there he lay motionless for some time. But the Hedgehog took the louis d’or and bottle of brandy which he had won, and went composedly home with his Wife. (page 479)
“Needle, Needle, sharp and fine,
Fit the house for wooer mine.” (page 481)
BARNES & NOBLE CLASSICS
NEW YORK
Published by Barnes & Noble Books
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New York, NY 10011
www.barnesandnoble.com/classics
This anonymous translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und
Hausmärchen was first published in 1869. The illustrations by Ludwig Emil Grimm,
Jacob and Wilhelm’s younger brother, come from a German edition
of the fairy tales, published in 1912.
Published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,
Notes, Biography, Chronology,
Inspired By, Comments & Questions,
and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2003 by Elizabeth Dalton.
Note on The Brothers Grimm, The World of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and
Their Fairy Tales, Inspired by Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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Grimm’s Fairy Tales
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-056-3 ISBN-10: 1-59308-056-5
eISBN : 978-1-411-43227-7
LC Control Number 2003108024
Produced and published in conjunction with:
Fine Creative Media, Inc.
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Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
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The Brothers Grimm
The name Grimm is forever linked with the strange and magical folktales two brothers labored to collect and preserve—stories peopled by characters like Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Grethel, Snow-White, and the Frog Prince. Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm were born in the German village of Hanau, Jacob in 1785 and Wilhelm a year later. Their father, Philipp, was a successful lawyer who fostered in his sons a strict sense of moral integrity and purpose. The brothers’ early education was both classical and Calvinist, and Jacob and Wilhelm were devoutly religious. The family’s prosperity turned to poverty when Philipp died suddenly in 1796. His widow, Dorothea (neée Zimmer) Grimm, with six children to care for, was forced to leave her large house and rely on the support of her family. With the aid of Dorothea’s sister Harriet, a lady-in-waiting to the princess of Hessia-Kassel, Jacob and Wilhelm were admitted to Kassel’s prestigious Lyzeum, where they received an excellent education.
Erudite, determined, and devoted to each other, the brothers enrolled at the University of Marburg, Jacob in 1802 and Wilhelm in 1803, both intending to study law. There they came under the influence of Professor Friedrich Karl von Savigny, the founder of historical jurisprudence, who taught that laws are correctly interpreted by tracing their historical and cultural origins. The brothers, shifting their interests away from law, adapted von Savigny’s methods to the study of linguistics and philology.
Jacob and Wilhelm were also deeply affected by the German Romantic movement, whose emphasis on folk culture would inspire their famous fairy-tale collection, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Stories), first published in two volumes, in 1812 and 1815. Beginning this work as both a study of the German language and an attempt to document the customs of the German people, the brothers collected their folktales by mining a variety of sources, including peasants and lower-class people, nannies and servants, educated young women from upper-middle-class and aristocratic families, and accounts in books and magazines.
The Grimms worked as librarians, and both became professors of German literature at the University of Goöttingen. But in 1837 the brothers, renowned and respected scholars with many published works to their credit, were forced from their university posts for political reasons. Unemployed and in financial difficulty, they set to work on their most ambitious project, the Deutsches Wörterbuch (German Dictionary), a lexicographical history of the German language that would prove to be a colossal and important undertaking and serve as the prototype for the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1840 the Grimms received professorships at the University of Berlin, where they continued their work on the German Dictionary and other projects in philology, linguistics, and German literature.
After the German revolution of 1848, the Grimm brothers were elected to parliament, but their hopes for democratic reform and German unification were dashed, and they left politics disappointed. Jacob retired from teaching at the university to do research, and published an important philological study, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language), and Wilhelm retired from his university post a few years later. In their final years the brothers devoted their energies to completing the German Dictionary but died before reaching the letter G; finishing the work was left to twentieth-century scholars.
From 1815 onward Wilhelm was largely in charge of continuing work on successive editions of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen —what has come to be known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales—often editing the stories to emphasize moral lessons or to remove material deemed offensive to bourgeois audiences. Although not immediately successful, the Grimm collection has stood the test of time and today is arguably the world’s most famous and beloved book of folktales.
Wilhelm Grimm died on December 16, 1859. Jacob Grimm died on September 20, 1863.
The World of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Their Fairy Tales
1785 Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm is born on January 4 in Hanau, in what is now Germany, to Philipp Wilhelm and Doro thea (neée Zimmer) Grimm. He is the second of their chil dren; Friedrich Hermann Georg, born in 1783, died in infancy.
1786 Wilhelm Carl Grimm is born on February 24 in Hanau.
1787 Philipp and Dorothea Grimm’s fourth son, Carl Friedrich, is born. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni appears.
1788 A fifth Grimm son, Ferdinand Philipp, is born. The U.S. Constitution is ratified.
1789 The French Revolution begins. English Romantic poet and artist William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence, writ ten from a child’s point of view.
1790 Ludwig Emil, sixth child of Philipp and Dorothea Grimm, is born. Ludwig will become an artist and an illustrator of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
1791 The Grimm family moves to Steinau, Germany, where Phi lipp becomes a district judge. The Grimms prosper in Stei nau; Philipp provides his family with a large house and domestic servants. Another son, Friedrich, is born but dies in infancy. Jacob and Wilhelm are schooled in the strict Reform Calvinist Church. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a leading figure of the German Romantic movement, be comes director of the Weimar Court Theater. In the United States, the Bill of Rights is passed.
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