Jacob and Wilhelm the Brothers Grimm

A Philologist usually has a reputation restricted to his fellow students; jurists and linguists win fame, more or less extended, in legal and scholarly circles. There is, perhaps, but one instance in which such studies have conferred a popular reputation. The name of the brothers Grimm is known at every fireside, cherished in every nursery.

Jakob Ludwig (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859) were brothers, united by life-long community of taste, interest, and labor. From youth they devoted themselves to philology and linguistics with the patient ardor characteristic of the German student. Jakob published valuable books on language and mythology; Wilhelm edited medieval German poems with scholarly accuracy.

But the fame of the Grimm brothers rests, for the world at large, upon the collection of folk-tales to which they lent their name. To collect these, the brothers pored over crabbed manuscripts which had gathered the dust of ages. They left their library for cottage firesides. Here they listened to the stories which old men and women handed down from their grandparents to their grandchildren These stories, gathered from oral and written sources, form the famous collection of "Kinder- und Haus-Marchen."

The complete collection is large, and, made for scholarly purposes, includes many relics of the childhood of the race, outgrown by even the children of to-day. Side by side with these are stories of perennial charm, such nursery favorites as "Cinderella" and "Red Riding Hood."

From the first this collection attracted the attention of scholars interested in the literary heritage of the Teutonic peoples. Yet more, it won the hearts of children and established for itself a foremost place among the classics of the nursery.

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TEXT CREDIT: GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES SELECTED AND EDITED FOR PRIMARY READER GRADES BY EDNA HENRY LEE TURPIN New York Maynard Merrill and Company JUL 12 1905 Harvard University,

Dept, of Education Library, lift of the Publishers. THANSFEfiKED TO HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Mai b 19k t Copyright, 1903, BY MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO.