Book Description
Maria Tatar redefines the Grimm canon with this authoritative and entertaining collection. The Annotated Brothers Grimm celebrates the richness and dramatic power of the legendary fables in the most spectacular and unusual Grimm volume in decades. Containing forty stories in new translations by Maria Tatar—including "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel"—the book also features 150 illustrations, many of them in color, by legendary painters such as George Cruikshank and Arthur Rackham; hundreds of annotations that explore the historical origins, cultural complexities, and psychological effects of these tales; and a biographical essay on the lives of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Perhaps most noteworthy is Tatar's decision to include tales that were previously excised, including a few bawdy stories and others that were removed after the Grimms learned that parents were reading the book to their children—stories about cannibalism in times of famine and stories in which children die at the end. Enchanting and magical, The Annotated Brothers Grimm will cast its spell on children and adults alike for decades to come. 75 color, 75 black-and-white illustrations.


About the Author
Maria Tatar is dean for the humanities and John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is editor of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, also from Norton.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Of all the rich fairy tales that exist in countries throughout the world, few are better known than those collected almost two centuries ago by a pair of German brothers -- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm -- in their Children's Stories and Household Tales. Forever recast and reimagined in literature, movies, opera, and even advertising, these stories are etched in our imagination. Here, in The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Maria Tatar collects these timeless stories in a sumptuous and visually powerful presentation that promises to reshape our understanding of the Grimms. Drawing from the authoritative version first published in 1857, Tatar, a leading scholar in the field of folklore and children's literature, has gathered over forty Grimm stories, judiciously selecting tales that both resonate with a modern audience and reveal the broad thematic range of the Grimm canon. Readers -- parents, children, students -- will come to see old favorites anew, including "Little Red Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel," while discovering some of the lesser-known yet equally captivating stories such as "The Star Talers," "Mother Holle," and "The Seven Ravens."

The stories -- newly translated by Tatar -- are accompanied by her insightful annotations, hundreds in all, which cover the tales' historical origins, their cultural complexities, and their psychological effects. Over 150 absorbing illustrations -- many of them in color -- by painters and illustrators such as George Cruikshank, Walter Crane, Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham are reproduced alongside the stories. Including an introduction by A. S. Byatt, the original prefaces of the editions published by the Grimms, a collection of reminiscences about "The Magic of Fairy Tales," and two essays by Tatar -- one tracing the lives of the Brothers Grimm, the other examining the history and cultural effects of their collection -- The Annotated Brothers Grimm captures the magic and irresistible pull of the tales while unlocking the potent mysteries many of them contain. Perhaps most noteworthy is Tatar's decision to include tales that were excised from later editions, including a few bawdy stories that were removed after the Grimms realized that children relished these tales as much as adults did. In restoring the tales, Tatar is able to -- in the tradition of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment -- examine what has kept the Grimms' fairy tales alive in our imagination and our culture: their ability to speak to our anxieties and fears, our desires and our passions, and our unconquerable belief in happy endings. Enchanting and magical, The Annotated Brothers Grimm will cast its spell on children and adults alike for decades to come.

SYNOPSIS

Tatar (humanities and Germanic languages and literature, Harvard U.) continues the series of classic works annotated marginally. Taking authentic versions from the 1857 seventh and final edition, she selects 46 of the original 210 tales that she thinks remain relevant to modern readers, most of which contain magic either as a device or as an effect on the reader. Some of her comments are cultural and others literary. She includes illustrations from early editions, many in color; a biographical essay on the brothers; prefaces to the first two editions; a collection of quotations about fairy tales; and a bibliography Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Neil Gaiman - The New York Times

The Annotated Brothers Grimm treats the stories as something important -- not, in the end, because of what they tell us of the buried roots of Germanic myth, or because of the often contradictory and intermittently fashionable psychoanalytic interpretations, or for any other reason than that they are part of the way we see the world, because they should be told. That's what I took from it, anyway. But fairy tales are magic mirrors: they show you what you wish to see.

Library Journal