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BROTHERS GRIMM:

The Brothers Grimm (Brüder Grimm, in their own words, not Gebrüder - for there were five surviving brothers, among them Ludwig Emil Grimm, the painter) were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hessian professors who were best known for publishing collections of authentic folk tales and fairy tales, and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time (Grimm's Law).

Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were born in 1785 and 1786, respectively, in Hanau near Frankfurt in Hesse. They were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and later both read law at the University of Marburg.

The brothers traveled widely throughout what is now Germany and other countries, performing field research for their linguistic work, which involved trying to find patterns in how the vowels and consonants which made up specific words changed over time. To determine these patterns, they needed to hear many different examples of authentic speech by various speakers of different ages and in different regions. They eventually discovered that one of the easiest ways to convince older local residents to give them lengthy examples of their natural speech was to ask the residents to tell their favorite stories to the brothers. As the brothers recorded the style of speech of the speaker for their research (which eventually led to the formulation of Grimm's Law), they also recorded the various stories that they were told, and eventually published them (in 1817). The stories became immensely popular, and were widely reprinted. Ironically, the brothers are now most widely known for these collections of stories, which were essentially an unexpected byproduct of the linguistic research which was their primary goal. For more on Brothers Grimm, click here.

The following books of Brothers Grimm are available:

• Grimm's Fairy Tales (.pdb, .lit, .html, .pdf)
• Household Stories (.pdb, .lit, .html, .pdf)
• Household Tales (.pdb, .lit, .html, .pdf)