SOURCE: "The Brothers Grimm and Their Collection of Kinder und Hausmärchen," in Theoria, Vol. XLV, October, 1975, pp. 41-54.

In the following essay, Ihms details the lives of the Grimm brothers and investigates the political and social dimensions of their fairy tales

The stories now known as Grimm's Fairy Tales appeared in English translation during the nineteenth century as Popular Stories¹ or Household Tales.² These titles correspond closely to the original German Kinder-und Hausmärchen. When nowadays we refer to the Fairy Tales, or in German to the Märchen, we use a one-sided and inadequate term which applies only to a certain part of the collection (to approximately 60 out of 210 tales).

The men who recorded these stories, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, were just one year apart in age, and were particularly close to one-another from childhood. To understand their work, it is necessary to consider...