This article summarizes the history of Grimm Tales. The first edition was made in 1812 and the most recent was in 1857.
“The stories the Brothers Grimm first collected are brusque, blunt, absurd, comical, and tragic, and are not, strictly speaking, “fairy tales.” In fact, the Grimms never intended the tales to be read by children. The tales are about children and families and how they reacted to the difficult conditions under which they lived. The Grimms thought the stories and their morals emanated naturally from the German people in an oral tradition, and they wanted to preserve them before the tales were lost forever” (Zipes, 2015).
The book changed a lot over the years and that’s also how they became more popular:
“The stories in the first edition are closer to the oral tradition than the tales of the final, which can be regarded more as a literary collection, because Wilhelm, the younger brother, continually honed the tales so that they would resonate with a growing literary public. Their books would become second in popularity only to the Bible in German-speaking lands. By the twentieth century, they would become the most famous collection of folk and fairy tales in the western world” (Zipes, 2015).
Their goal was to preserve German folklore from falling into obscurity. The article mentioned this important fact:
“In short, the Grimms’ first collection was shaped as an archaeological excavation and as a book for adults and for scholars. Their tales were not to be classified as children’s stories, not even today” (Zipes, 2015).
This is interesting to me due to their current reputation. This also makes sense since many tales were quite disturbing:
“’The Children of Famine’ begins this way:
Once upon a time there was a woman with two daughters, and they had become so poor that they no longer had even a piece of bread to put in their mouths. Their hunger became so great that their mother became unhinged and desperate. Indeed, she said to her children, ‘I’ve got to kill you so that I can get something to eat.'”
However, many of these disturbing tales were removed or edited in later editions.
References:
Zipes, J. (2015, April). How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale. The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/marchapril/feature/how-the-grimm-brothers-saved-the-fairy-tale