The Best of Grimm’s Fairy Tales

The Grimm Brothers wrote down these stories in German over two hundred years ago. That’s also when they were translated into English, making them feel very awkward to read today, full of old-fashioned words like thou, thee, and dost that most of us only ever encounter in Shakespeare class. So we’ve discreetly updated the language to use more modern wording.

The stories themselves are completely untouched: every twist, every character, every moment of magic or darkness is exactly as the Brothers Grimm wrote it. There is no reinterpretation, no watering down of the more gruesome elements, nor have we added any modern political correctness. We’ve just cleared away the cobwebs so you can enjoy the tales without having to find a dictionary to look up terms like sexton, pinafore, or nosegay.

Some of the issues are nothing to do with the wording, but because “the past is a foreign country;” so we’ve also added footnotes to explain unfamiliar social and cultural elements as well as some of the jokes and references that would otherwise go over our heads.

Additionally, we’ve written an appendix to give you some background information on the world in which these tales were recorded. Understanding that context really helps to ground these tales in their place and time.

We hope you love reading these stories as much as we loved bringing them to you.

— The Publishers