Customer Reviews

The Annotated Brothers Grimm (The Annotated Books)

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Like the others in this series (The Annotated Wizard of Oz, The Annotated A Christmas Story), this volume is beautifully illustrated and annotated with details that personalize the age-old tales, revealing original publishers names and themes, a behind-the-scenes peek at the historical background of those fairy tales we have loved since childhood.

In a very personal introduction, A.S. Byatt speaks of her own yearning for myth and fantasy as a young girl: talking birds, unicorns, princesses, imps and spun gold, hair cascading down the length of a turret. Byatt cautions us to remember the violent nature of the past and that the acceptance of violence was a part of everyday life; hence, the physical became part of the narrative, public hangings common to the times. The beauty of fairy tales is that limbs grow back and the sleeper awakens, once more alive.

The editor/translator has reassembled original Grimm stories in the order they were first seen by the public. There are the most familiar, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and The Golden Goose; but Tater goes even further, adding stories that were removed, most originally meant for adults, later considered too bawdy for the consumption of children. And Tater has another surprise in this volume: a biographical essay on the Grimm Brothers, their personal lives and political views, as well as the original prefaces.

This book is a treasure on many levels, the early appreciation of fantasy read as a child, the historical implications of those tales, the psychology that underlies the power of story and man's need for images to act great battles of good and evil. Far deeper than mere storytelling, the Tales of the Brothers Grimm are the sturm und drang of the German culture, powerful and political, pagan and pure, complex and simple. Cultural complications aside, this tome stimulates curiosity at every turn, the beginning of a great adventure even adults can enjoy.

These wonderful, familiar stories are brought to life by the exquisite illustrations, both black and white and full color, as well as the annotated remarks that add such flavor to the interpretation. A visual and intellectual treat, The Annotated Brothers Grimm is a feast of possibilities, fancies, fears and dreams. The impossible is possible. It is all a matter of imagination. Luan Gaines/2004.

I was surprised by the depth and value of the content in such a beautiful, "coffee-table" book. This is a collection of the Grimm's Fairy Tales with annotations describing each tale, where it fit within the collecting work of the Grimms', and what individual allusions and themes might mean throughout each text.

Readers beware: this is not a children's book. Rather, it might be read by an adult to children, but it contains much thoroughly overblown academic delvings into the psychosocial an psychosexual meanings supposedly behind many of the tales. It also does not shy away from bringing the readers attention to all of the sexual dimensions found in various other forms of the tales.

All that said, this is a valuable book chronicling the history of the Grimms' collection, illustrating and adding to the content in many helpful and enjoyable ways.

THE ANNOTATED BROTHERS GRIMM, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, edited with a Preface and Notes by Maria Tatar, translated by Maria Tatar, Introduction by A. S. Byatt. Norton, 500 Fifth Ave., NY, 10110. 2004. 462+lvii pp. $35.00 hard cover/7" x 10", ISBN 0-393-05848-4. color/black-and-white illustrations, bibliography.
With its color illustrations by Rackham, Nielsen, Cruikshank, and other popular book illustrators, and simple, spritey translations by Tatar, this collection of Grimm's Tales can be appreciated solely for its visual and literary quality. The rich blue cover with gilded decoration and lettering contributes as well to the special quality of this book. But for readers looking for more than the timeless fairy tales tales well told complemented by pleasing illustrations, Tatar's marginal annotations and introductory essay "Reading the Grimms" along with A. S. Byatt's 10-page Introduction enhance the tales in citing the origins of their elements, pointing to references of their characters and imagery, and denoting particular representations of themes and teachings found in all fairy tales and similar children's literature. Such material defines the distinctiveness of the Grimm's works while also setting them within the wide and long tradition of children's literature. With its inclusion of nine Grimm's "Tales for Adults" omitted from typical collections along with the varied other material allowing for appreciation or study of the many fairy tales in different ways, this work stands alone in its treatment of the tales. It's a part of the publisher's series of annotated editions of popular classics, including the Wizard of Oz and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

This edition has a great deal to go for it. It is beautifully illustrated, contains the "authoritative" direct 1857 versions of many of the Grimm's collected tales, and it includes several tales which have been bowdlerized out of more modern editions, such as "The Jew in the Brambles."

Despite these virtues, however, it has two distinct flaws.

1) It is not complete. Rather than include the complete collection of stories, it focuses on the better-known stories such as Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, etc. It does include many lesser-known stories, but it doesn't have them all.

2) I personally found the annotations somewhat pointless. Rather than provide new information, or explicate the period germanic background from which the tales were derived, or provide much information about the Grimm's scholarly research, they merely provided the annotator's own personal interpretation of the story, i.e., "fetched some large stones and filled the wolf's belly with them. The stones have been read as a sign of sterility, but they are more likely an appropriate retaliation for the incorporation of Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother."

I'm not sure this volume ever really made up its mind as to its target audience. It includes too many stories with clearly offensive themes (again, "The Jew in the Brambles") to be suitable for young children, but at the same time, the annotations do not appear to be aimed at scholarly readers, and the wealth of illustration gives the impression the book is aimed at young audiences after all.

I personally would have been happier with a volume that included the entire collection of Grimm's tales and detailed, factual annotations. Other readers might prefer a cozy illustrated volume of Grimm's Greatest Hits with annotations to spell out the complicated parts ("Wait, the wolf is a sexual predator?!"). This volume seemed to attempt to strike at both those targets, and hit neither (although it fell closer to the second).

I was a little disappointed to find that Ms. Tatar chose to modernize the language of the Tales to the extent she did. While it's not a bad idea to make literature that is at least purportedly aimed at children more accessible, I think it is also important that the language retain some of the character of the original. Case in point: one of my favorite Grimm tales, "The Boy Who Could Not Shudder," which frightened me immensely as a child, has been changed dramatically here. Instead of being unable to shudder, the boy is unable to get the creeps. That's not really even the same thing, and lessens the impact by failing to use exactly the right word in exactly the right circumstance, a goal toward which I believe all writers, translators, or editors should strive.

A beautifully bound volume of the Grimm collection. With its side notes and explanations of what is going on in each tale, what better way to teach children the origin of these stories and gain a greater appreciation of its creation.
This book is just that book to have on your library shelf. I am delighted to have it. (And I am well over 13 years of age.)

This book is truly a treasure to browse through and read. The author, Maria Tatar has collected more than forty Grimm stories sourced from the authoritative version first published in 1857. The author has the credentials to back up her work - she is a renowned scholar in the field of folklore and children's literature, and has authored many books in the field. As someone who is quite familiar with children's literature, especially fairy tales (albeit from a layperson's point of view), I was impressed by these new translations and the deep insights afforded by Ms. Tatar's annotations.

The book contains an introduction by A.S. Byatt, the author of Possession : A Romance (Modern Library) and Babel Tower, among others. There is also an article by the author titled "Reading the Grimm's Children's Stories and Household Tales: Origins and Cultural Effects of the Collection" which in itself, provides interesting perspectives on fairy tales. As Tatar writes, "the fairy tale keeps us firmly rooted in reality....we never stray into a world that requires us to navigate a new reality or to learn entirely new rules of behavior." The articles also explores some of the defining characteristics of fairy tales, the link between myth and culture as observed by Joseph Campbell (author of The Power of Myth), and the origins of fairy tales.

The book itself is divided into five parts:
Part I The Tales (37 in all) including The Frog King, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Furrypelts, The Singing, Soaring Lark, The Worn-out Dancing Shoes, etc.

Part II Tales for Adults
The Jew in the Brambles
Mother Trudy
The Hand with the Knife
How Children Played Butcher with Each Other
Hans Dumm
The Evil Mother-in-Law
The Children Living in a Time of Famine
The Stubborn Child
The Rose

Part III The Brothers Grimm: Biographical Essay

Part IV Other Matters (Prefaces to the First Two Editions of the Grimms' Children's Stories and Household Tales

Part V The Magic of Fairy Tales (Further Reading and a Bibliography of Illustrations)


The work is extensively illustrated in both color and B&W, with illustrations by some renowned artists such as Arthur Rackham, and samples of his work can be seen in The Arthur Rackham Treasury: 86 Full-Color Illustrations, amongst others, Kay Nielsen, and also A.H. Watson.

The annotations reflect a deep understanding of the motivations behind the writing of these fairy tales, for example on page 231, the annotation to "the evil mother-in-law was sentenced to death at the stake" (from The Six Swans) reads "the villain's punishment, however severe, is no worse than what she planned for the tale's protagonist. The fact that she burns to ashes signifies a definitive end to her reign of terror." Most readers are drawn by the triumph of good over evil in these fairy tales, and children especially are calmed by the thought that such evil will end at the end and the perpetrator/villain will not ever return to cause pain or hurt.

I am deeply impressed by this work and have a couple of other annotated works by the same author. I hope to share them with my young daughter someday (she does ooh and aah at the illustrations!).

As with the other annotated fairy tale books of Maria Tatar, such as The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales and The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, this book just looks really good on the shelf. But, take it down and start to read it, and it will be a while before you can put it back. Grimm's fairy tales truly are the cream of the crop, and the annotations in this book really bring the lifelike stories closer to home. And as with the other tomes, this book is well laid out, has nice pages and brilliant illustrations, and is satisfying to hold, behold, and read. If you want the truly spooky, scary, gory Grimm, I would suggest you have a look at The Complete Fairy Tales of Brothers Grimm (Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm), but get this book too for the annotations to the more familiar stories.

I read this when I was a young child and I never forgot this story. I love the ORIGINAL Grimm Brother's, I don't like the Disney cookie cutter version. This annotated version is great because you get more details and explanation in what you are reading.

It arrived not only on time but even EARLIER than expected! :) Now I'll be ready for Spring Semester without any worries. Thanks!