Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm were the German scholars Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), both born in Hanau, whose collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales) first appeared in 1812 and was revised by them for more than four decades.

Both brothers worked as librarians in Kassel and later held posts at the University of Göttingen, which they lost in 1837 as two of the "Göttingen Seven", the professors who refused an oath of allegiance demanded by King Ernest Augustus. They moved on to Berlin, where Wilhelm taught at the university. Alongside the tales they published Deutsche Sagen (German Legends, two volumes, 1816 to 1818), and in 1838 they began the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a German dictionary that was still unfinished when they died. Jacob also wrote Deutsche Mythologie (1835) and was a pioneering philologist.

The first volume of the tales, with 86 stories, appeared on 20 December 1812, and a second volume of 70 more followed, dated 1815. The brothers kept revising the book: it went through 17 editions up to 1858, seven in the full "large" form and ten in an abridged "small" edition of 50 tales aimed at children, illustrated by their brother Ludwig Emil Grimm. The seventh and last large edition, of 1857, held 200 tales plus ten children's legends.

For collectors, the German first edition of 1812 and 1815 is the cornerstone. In English the key book is German Popular Stories, Edgar Taylor's anonymous translation issued between 1823 and 1826 with illustrations by George Cruikshank: it was the first English version of the Grimms' tales and helped fairy stories win acceptance as children's reading in England.