Have you ever wondered where Snow White and the Seven Dwarves derived? Rapunzel, Hansel, Gretel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood? Where were these stories popularized and mainstreamed?
These and a whole host of other fairy tales and stories are the collected work of the Grimm brothers. Some of the stories were published 100 years earlier by Charles Perrault, others went back generations in popular lore...but they all came together under one umbrella and have been attributed, or identified with the Grimms ever since.
Originally published in 1812 for volume one and 1815 for volume two (both years are also watersheds for Napoleon and the French...1812 being the invasion of Russia and 1815 being the 100 days and Waterloo), they sported the original title "Kinder und Haus-Märchen" or Child and Home Stories. Originally, they were dark, earthy tales, much more wicked than later "cleaned" up versions. For example, Rapunzel was impregnated by the Prince and was in wonderment of her growing belly...Snow White's real mother is the evil queen who wants to feast on her daughter's flesh...and Cinderella's stepsisters were actually cutting their feet with a knife to fit into the glass slipper. As the years passed (and no doubt because of criticism) the Grimm's toned down the stories, re-writing them, making them more "user friendly" and less pithy.
If you want to read the first editions of both volumes in German...you can find those here...
The first English translation...
Modern translations available on Amazon.com
Charles Perrault, an earlier French writer, published some of these tales in 1697 as Histoires ou contes du temps passé or Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye...in English...Tales of Mother Goose.
This book was translated into English in 1729 from the French 1721 edition, available here: Histoires ou contes du temps passé
Unfortunately, there is only one first edition 1729 English translated copy left...and it resides at Harvard University...no digital facsimile copy is available for now...but here are some later English translations of Mother Goose...