18 December 2014, The Tablet

Grimm reality

by Melanie McDonagh

 
The world of the Brothers Grimm is a deeply moral one: wrongdoers get their just deserts, promises must be kept and the underdog usually triumphs in the end. That is why their stories are perfect for the Christmas season There are umpteen editions of the Grimm Brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales in English (Russell Brand has just done a particularly disagreeable version of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin”). But now Jack Zipes has produced the first complete English translation of the original stories from 1812 and 1815. With lovely papercut illustrations by Andrea Dezsö, it is published by Princeton as The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition.This, Zipes tell us in his extensive introduction, is the real deal: &ldquo
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