Grimms' Fairy Tales

by Brothers Grimm
Translators: Marian Edwardes


Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales, is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. Vol. 1 of the first edition contained 86 stories, which were followed by 70 more tales, numbered consecutively, in the 1st edition, Vol. 2, in 1815. By the seventh edition in 1857, the corpus of tales had expanded to 200 tales and 10 "Children's Legends".
The Grimms believed that the most natural and pure forms of culture were linguistic and based in history. The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the English Joseph Jacobs, and Jeremiah Curtin, an American who collected Irish tales. There was not always a pleased reaction to their collection. Joseph Jacobs was in part inspired by his complaint that English children did not read English fairy tales; in his own words, "What Perrault began, the Grimms completed".
W. H. Auden praised the collection during World War II as one of the founding works of Western culture. The tales themselves have been put to many uses. Adolf Hitler praised them so strongly that the Allies warned against them, as Hitler thought they were folkish tales showing children with sound racial instincts seeking racially pure marriage partners; for instance, Cinderella with the heroine as racially pure, the stepmother as an alien, and the prince with an unspoiled instinct being able to distinguish. Writers who have written about the Holocaust have combined the tales with their memoirs, as Jane Yolen in her Briar Rose.
Grimms' Fairy Tales is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Registry. 
Excerpted from Grimms' Fairy Tales on Wikipedia.

Grimms' Fairy Tales

person AuthorJacob and Wilhelm Grimm
language CountryGermany
api GenreFairy tale, Children's Literature, Fantasy
copyright CopyrightPublic domain in the United States.
camera_alt Book coverThanks to Canva
book_online EbooksProject Gutenberg
description ScansGoogle-digitized
headphones AudioLibrivox | Internet Archive
auto_stories Read online
  1. The golden bird
  2. Hans in luck
  3. Jorinda and Jorindel
  4. The travelling musicians
  5. Old Sultan
  6. The straw, the coal, and the bean
  7. Briar Rose
  8. The dog and the sparrow
  9. The twelve dancing princesses
  10. The fisherman and his wife
  11. The willow-wren and the bear
  12. The frog-prince
  13. Cat and mouse in partnership
  14. The goose-girl
  15. The adventures of Chanticleer and Partlet
  16. Rapunzel
  17. Fundevogel
  18. The valiant little tailor
  19. Hansel and Gretel
  20. The mouse, the bird, and the sausage
  21. Mother Holle
  22. Little Red-Cap [Little Red Riding Hood]
  23. The robber bridegroom
  24. Tom Thumb
  25. Rumpelstiltskin
  26. Clever Gretel
  27. The old man and his grandson
  28. The little peasant
  29. Frederick and Catherine
  30. Sweetheart Roland
  31. Snowdrop
  32. The pink
  33. Clever Elsie
  34. The miser in the bush
  35. Ashputtel
  36. The white snake
  37. The wolf and the seven little kids
  38. The queen bee
  39. The elves and the shoemaker
  40. The juniper-tree
  41. The turnip
  42. Clever Hans
  43. The three languages
  44. The fox and the cat
  45. The four clever brothers
  46. Lily and the lion
  47. The fox and the horse
  48. The blue light
  49. The raven
  50. The golden goose
  51. The water of life
  52. The twelve huntsmen
  53. The king of the golden mountain
  54. Doctor Knowall
  55. The seven ravens
  56. The wedding of Mrs Fox
  57. The salad
  58. The story of the youth who went forth to learn what fear was
  59. King grisly-beard
  60. Iron Hans
  61. Cat-skin
  62. Snow-white and Rose-red