Before “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Snow White” became widely known in published form, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were trying to preserve traditional stories and study them. Influenced by the 19th-century Romantic interest in popular culture, they saw folk narratives as a source of German literature and culture. Their first volume of Children’s and Household Tales, published in 1812, contained 86 stories.
The brothers did not mainly collect their material from peasants, despite the reputation that later developed around their work. Many stories came from educated urban acquaintances, including members of Wilhelm’s wife’s family, and some storytellers had French Huguenot backgrounds. The Grimms invited storytellers to their home, wrote down what they heard, and also drew on earlier written sources.
Recording a tale was only the beginning of their process. Jacob set the collection’s basic framework, while Wilhelm gradually took responsibility for editing: he added dialogue, adjusted plots, and made the prose more alike in style. Later editions removed some sexual material, added lessons for children, and changed language and characters to sound more German; between 1812 and 1857, the collection grew to more than 200 tales.
Their interest in tales was part of a larger study of language. At Marburg, the brothers came to believe that a people’s culture could be traced through its language, especially its grammar and oral forms. They began the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838, aiming to give each word a history and analysis; its first volume appeared in 1854, but the dictionary remained unfinished when Wilhelm died in 1859 and Jacob in 1863.
Through their methods of gathering, comparing, revising, and documenting oral material, the brothers helped establish methods later used in folklore research. Their work also joined fairy tales to the history of the German language, rather than treating the stories only as children’s entertainment.