The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

The Complete First Edition

De: Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Jack Zipes - translator/editor

Narrado por: Joel Richards, Cassandra Campbell

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their Children's and Household Tales in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as "Rapunzel", "Hansel and Gretel", and "Cinderella" would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style. For the very first time, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions. These narrative gems, are newly translated and brought together in one beautiful audiobook. From "The Frog King" to "The Golden Key", wondrous worlds unfold - heroes and heroines are rewarded, weaker animals triumph over the strong, and simple bumpkins prove themselves not so simple after all. Esteemed fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes offers accessible translations that retain the spare description and engaging storytelling style of the originals. Indeed, this is what makes the tales from the 1812 and 1815 editions unique - they reflect diverse voices, rooted in oral traditions, that are absent from the Grimms' later, more embellished collections of tales. Zipes' introduction gives important historical context, and the book includes the Grimms' prefaces and notes. A delight to read, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm presents these peerless stories to a whole new generation of readers.

©2014 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Exactly What I Wanted

I wanted a bunch of fairy tales to listen to before bed, and that's what I got. I like the creepy and gory versions, so all the better.
It's an odd translation. Things that I'm used to hearing as rhymes don't rhyme, which is a little jarring. Also, there's a ridiculously long intro - 1:20hours - that you should just skip if all you want is to listen to fairy tales.
Aside from that, I find the original stories fascinating. Mixed in among the blood and horror I expected, there are also Christian fairy tales. They're not biblical, are written in the same style as the other stories in this collection, but with Mary, The Devil, etc.
Cassandra Campbell remains one of my favorite narrators. She does different voices, but they're not obnoxious like so many, and her narration style makes me picture a slightly wicked smile, which is perfect for this. Joel Richards is ok, though a little monotonous/robotic in this reading, and some of his diction is so sharp that it's a little distracting.

Great book

loved it!! Grimm brothers original fairy tales has an interesting take on the fairy tales growing up

Volume 1 is good, volume 2 boring

Volume 1 contains all the famous stories. The second is a mismatched jumble of tropes and stock phrases that just didn't do it for me.

Not The Tales You Remember

These certainly are not the tales that have come down. These are the original versions of the folktales that the fairy tales evolved from. This is an excellent collection and the performance of the two narrators is very well done. Did not want this book to end.

wonderful with a lot of history

it's such a wonderful telling of the grimms tales and feels like I'm learning about the history of folklore

Great for first time Grimm fairytale readers

This book was required during our Grimm tales class. It was a great introduction especially for first time fairytale readers.

live the stories not the storyteller

I enjoy listening to the short stories before bed. But the storyteller/narrators speach is blocky and unamusing

Actually Interesting

It'll transform you into the 18th century, it was beautiful. Not even a little grim, just story telling as it was, so pure.

Great Stories

I Loved it , the stories were very interesting and the
story teller kept my attention.

A Treasury of Raw, Brutal, Bizarre & Funny Fantasy

In Jack Zipes' substantial introduction to The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition (2014), which he translates and edits, he asserts that although the six later editions are better known, the first edition is of interest for being closer to the source tales, retaining more of their raw oral flavor and diverse voices, and receiving less of the Grimms' polishing and literary standardizing. The 156 first-edition tales (published in 1812 and 1815) are a trove that prove Zipes' case.

I expected to find the classic tales like "The Frog King," "The Wolf and the Seven Kids," "The Fisherman and His Wife," "Cinderella," "Little Red Cap," "The Juniper Tree," "Rumplestiltskin," and "Bluebeard." But, yes, the older versions are often rawer or more brutal than the later ones: The envious and murderous step-mother of the later "Little Snow White" and the callous and cruel step-mother of the later "Hansel and Gretel" were originally biological mothers; Rapunzel in the original tale becomes pregnant after the secret visits of her prince; the lopped off, be-ringed finger of an unknown girl in the later "The Robber Bridegroom" belongs to the bride's butchered grandmother in the original version; and so on.

I enjoyed encountering many stories new to me, like "The Animals of the Lord and the Devil," "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering," "The Devil's Sooty Brother," "The Carnation," and "The Stolen Pennies." Many neat, unexpected touches appear throughout. A male giant suckles a thumb-sized boy at his breast for years until the boy becomes a giant. The dirt of hell becomes the gold of earth (a reversal of fairy gold). A man stops boys from tormenting a mouse by buying it and freeing it. A woman says to her lover, "Now I'll louse you and you'll feel better." A frog makes a gnat pie for a lion. And the classic tales often have unexpected virtues, as when even the flies and the fire fall asleep after Briar Rose pricks her finger, and when the right prince shows up "Everything was so quiet he could hear himself breathe."

The variety of tale types is impressive. There are origin stories, ghost stories, plucky underdog stories, lazy or stupid people stories, cannibalism stories, Beauty and the Beast stories, wish stories, quest stories, break the enchantment stories, unhappy ending stories, tall tales, nonsense stories, repeating accumulating list stories, murder will out stories, gruesome comedy stories, miss-matched animal stories, animal-human love stories, story fragments, and even an Ali Baba story and a King Lear story.

Many stories are funny, like the one in which a king will leave his kingdom to the laziest of his three sons. And there are disturbing stories, like the one in which a king wants to marry his daughter because she looks like her recently deceased mother, and bizarre stories like the one in which a blood sausage invites a liver sausage to a dinner in order to eat it, or the one in which the single louse on an ultra-clean princess is fed on milk till it grows large as a calf, or the one in which noses grow 20 miles long when the right apples are eaten.

The tales feature plenty of princes and princesses, poor youngest sons and daughters, unreasonable kings, wicked mothers and step-mothers, canny "simple" people, impossible tasks, detailed instructions, reversals of fortune, awful punishments, comedic or horrific violence, doomed or fulfilled love, and moral lessons promoting kindness, generosity, humility, and cleverness. And everywhere fantastic elements: fairies, dwarves, giants, witches talking animals; invisibility cloaks, wish granting fish, gold making cloths, magical swords, ever replenishing food tables and ever refilling money pouches; and many, many metamorphoses, from people becoming animals to animals becoming people.

Many of the tales do feel "oral" because of narrator comments like, "And whoever doesn't believe me, must give me a gold coin," and "When the wedding took place, I was wearing a pair of glass shoes and stumbled over a stone. The stone said 'clink' and my shoes broke in two." Contributing to that oral feel are the many little rhymes inserted into the stories (e.g., "Shake and wobble, little tree!/Let beautiful clothes fall down to me"), and Zipes' demotic and contemporary translation (e.g., "though she was young and beautiful, he couldn't look at her without getting the creeps and secretly shuddering").

An odd part of the audiobook experience is that although the physical book seems designed for adults interested in the history of folk tales (hence its Princeton UP publisher), the alternating readers, Joel Richards and Cassandra Campbell, seem to be reading the tales for children, Campbell, for instance, trying too hard to make bad characters sound sinister by elongating certain vowels and consonants. Moreover, the audiobook lacks all of Zipes’ detailed notes, which include information on the Grimm brothers’ sources for their tales, whole alternate versions of them, and other interesting information, like the fact that the brothers’ sources for the anti-Semitic “The Jew in the Thornbush” all feature Catholic monks instead of Jews as the “justly” punished villain of the story. Yet it's hard to imagine a child having the patience or constitution to listen to all 156 tales straight through. (The great number of tales and shared elements overwhelmed me at times.) With the physical book, a child could read a tale here and a tale there and enjoy the illustrations, and adults could select tales to read to their kids. The audiobook has a different chapter for each story, but the tales are so short that the feature often misses the title and first words of a story when you try to jump forward or backward tale by tale.

Therefore, if you’re a serious student of folk and fairy tales, you’d better get the original Princeton UP book, while if you just enjoy such tales, the audiobook should be fine. Either way it is a rich storehouse of story.