Jacob Grimm (1785–1863)
Author of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
About the Author
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm born in 1785, is the older of two brothers known as Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Karl Grimm is the other. Each author published books separately and these names should not be combined with each other nor with a combined name such as Brothers Grimm or Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Thanks. Individual books can be combined by ISBN if there is one. -- The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales is not at all equivalent to selections and editions intended for children.
(ger) Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm geboren 1785, ist der ältere von zwei Brüdern, die als Brüder Grimm bekannt sind, Wilhelm Karl Grimm ist der andere. Beide veröffentlichten auch eigenständig Bücher, die nicht mit "Brüder Grimm" oder "Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm" kombiniert werden sollten. Danke. Individuelle Ausgaben können mit Hilfe der ISBN - soweit vorhanden - kombiniert werden..
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Die Gesamtausgabe der Grimmschen Märchen ist bei weitem nicht deckungsgleich mit Auswahlausgaben und Bearbeitungen für Kinder.
Series
Works by Jacob Grimm
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Grimm, Jacob
- Legal name
- Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl
- Other names
- Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Carl
Grimm, Jacob - Birthdate
- 1785-01-04
- Date of death
- 1863-09-20
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Marburg
- Occupations
- mythologist
jurist
philologist
writer
clerk (war office)
folklorist (show all 8)
librarian (to Jerome Bonaparte)
professor - Organizations
- University of Berlin
University of Göttingen - Awards and honors
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Foreign Honorary Member 1857)
American Philosophical Society (1863) - Relationships
- Grimm, Wilhelm (brother)
Diderot, Denis (friend) - Nationality
- Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel (
Germany - Birthplace
- Hanau, Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, Holy Roman Empire (now Hesse ∙ Germany)
- Places of residence
- Hanau, Hesse, Germany
Göttingen, Germany
Berlin, Germany - Place of death
- Berlin, Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
- Map Location
- Germany
- Disambiguation notice
- Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm born in 1785, is the older of two brothers known as Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Karl Grimm is the other. Each author published books separately and these names should not be combined with each other nor with a combined name such as Brothers Grimm or Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Thanks. Individual books can be combined by ISBN if there is one.
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The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales is not at all equivalent to selections and editions intended for children.
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Discussions
Reviews
A "complete" edition of the Brothers Grimm might prove overwhelming for the very young child, but this title is the perfect length. Foreman's art, which can be both eerie and humorous, enhances the effect of these "strange little tales." I enjoyed Alderson's translation, which strives to locate the tales in their oral context, and to communicate the directness of the text in the original German. The language here is not "fancy" or remote, and has an earthy, sometimes very working-class flavor. This is a very "British" translation, particularly in those selections where Alderson is trying to approximate the dialectical variations of the original, but I think American readers will be able to appreciate it.
The tales themselves (as always) are fascinating... The gruesome Fitcher's Bird, a variation on the classic Bluebeard story, always makes me shiver. The Fisherman and His Wife is a tale that has been recurring in my reading recently, with versions from Poland and Russia cropping up. The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Rapunzel are always favorites, as is Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin.
Greedy and cruel women abound here, and their punishments are invariably extreme. The double-standards can be a little difficult to take: the uncaring father in Hans, My Hedgehog is rewarded by his son in the end, but neglectful mothers meet terrible ends. Still, children will thrill to these tales (severed body parts and all), particularly the ones about young people cast out into the world. show less
I greatly enjoyed this fairy tale. As a child, I liked the way that the dead mother was still a powerful force and very much present in the story. I liked that, in contrast to the cutesy and clean fairy godmother of Perrault, the magic show more here is earthy and mysterious. I liked that the animals themselves were magic. Grownup me can appreciate the villainy of the stepmother, who gives Aschenputtel permission to attend if she can accomplish a simple (and impossible) task. It’s just reasonable enough on the surface to make her seem fair, and it gives just enough hope to be really cruel. Neither kid-me nor grownup-me was surprised that the stepsisters cut their feet to fit the slipper; I still maintain that this was very much in character for them: they were desperate, and willing to sacrifice. It was also in character for their mother, whose pushiness hurt everyone around her, including her own children. Finally, I really like the active role that Aschenputtel takes in her own life. She knows when and how (and whom!) to ask for help. She takes steps to forge a connection with her dead mother, she commands the birds, and she uses magic to create her own fancy dress.
The only part of the story I don’t like is the very end, (SPOILER ALERT!) when retribution comes for the stepsisters. The birds peck their eyes out. This always seemed to me to miss the point. The stepsisters have already suffered plenty: Physically, their feet get cut apart; Romantically, they lose out on the prince; Financially, they have limited prospects for anyone else; Socially, they’ve missed out on a long-term relationship with Aschenputtel because their mother had prevented them from treating her as family for all those years; and Morally, well, just look at their mother. (She gets off scott-free, by the way.) The blindness addendum didn’t exist in early versions of the story; it was only added by the Grimm brothers to a later edition of their work in order to make the story more appropriate for children. I think that if they were trying to instill a sense of justice by punishing the wicked, they should have left the children alone and gone after the stepmother. This is the only misstep in an otherwise wonderful story. On the whole, a beautiful fairy tale that doesn’t shy away from themes of family, loss, and love. show less
Now, I don't wish any authors dead, as I'd rather they generate as much work as possible before I finish collecting it, but I just love it when I can get a copy of EVERY JOT AND TITTLE BY AUTHOR show more A, so I don't have to have too many books on my shelf.
Because of this quirk, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales is a wonder for me. Within this work, I discovered a very interesting thing that the Disney generation would probably miss: The fairy tales were not intended solely for children (and at times, probably weren't suitable for children), but were instead intended for the people. The children's stories, however, are not fairy tales, per se, but are more religious morality tales featuring Jesus or the Apostles.
If you've been raised on Disney and colorful picture books, then reading the collected, uncut works may be a shock to you. They're pretty gruesome. And everybody had lice.
But, within its pages, we have all the great tales: Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding-Hood, and so forth. And unless you're a Grimm scholar, there will probably be a story in there that you've never heard of before.
I would probably not recommend this book for your children. Other people's children, maybe, but not yours, unless you don't want to molly-coddle them until they're 36. But, don't give it to your children expecting it to be the brightly-colored, sanitized version of all your favorite fairy tales. It is, instead, the grim (was that pun intended?) tales as originally written, and well worth the read. show less
What makes this book interesting is all the stories (pleasant and otherwise) that you may have missed reading from your childhood. Those blithely sanitized versions might have been sanitized for good cause. If you follow that link above, for example, you’ll find the horrific tale of what happens when children play at slaughtering a pig (or you can read it on page 79 in the printed volume). If you are familiar with Philip Pullman’s collection from 2011/2012 entitled Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm, you may recall that it was handled in such a way as to make it suitable in most respects for sharing with your child or younger siblings. Zipes’ version really isn’t. In fact there’s an interesting bit in the Zipes’ preface that references re-telling of the tales “mixing in mannerisms of contemporary writing.” Pullman did that with some deftness to make the tales he selected more fun to read aloud. There is none of that in the 170 tales contained in this Princeton University Press edition.
Zipes does what Philip Pullman could not. An acknowledged expert in German, comparative literature and fairy tales, Zipes did his own translation of the two earliest editions of the Tales of the Brothers Grimm. He does not expurgate, he does not censor, he does not in any way soften these tales from the harsh originals gathered at least in part from an oral tradition that was disappearing from German homes even as the Brothers worked to preserve them. (We tend to forget that the Brothers -- at least one of them -- was employed as a librarian.)
The illustrations by Andrea Dezsö nicely complement the macabre tales here, the ones that usually are edited out of sanitized versions of the Brothers Grimm intended for sharing at children’s bedtimes. Because so many of these tales from the 18th century which appear in this volume are macabre and are unapologetic in presenting the savagery that we know continues to lurk in modern man in the 21st century. Quick side note: Dezso frequently illustrates the tales that feature Satan -- who really isn’t nearly as frightening as you might anticipate he would be. But like the tales, some of the illustrations may not be entirely suitable for children. (Again follow that link to the Princeton University Press blog in the second paragraph above to see an example.. show less
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