The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and edited by Jack Zipes

I might be completely obsessed with birds these days but I haven't left behind my first love, fairy tales. I have in the past read through a complete collection of the Grimm fairy tales, but this particular collection is doing something interesting – it's a complete translated collection of the first editions of the Grimm brothers' stories. Over the course of their lives, the Grimms did a fair amount of work to edit and alter the stories to better fit what they discovered was the actual audience for these tales, and the first edition is the one that comes closest to accurately reflecting the stories as they first collected them from the traditional tellers. But it's the versions of stories that are found in later editions that everyone is familiar with today.

It's been so long since I've read the more usually available versions that I can't speak in much detail to the comparison, but it was fun to read through this collection and get a sense of some of the kinds of stories German people told in that era. It's a very readable translation, too, and the editor/translator is an expert on the topic. And I appreciated the distinctive illustrations throughout (art done in cut-paper!) even though I don't personally love the way the artist did people.

Highly recommended!