Grimm's Fairy Tales
Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), 1812
The stories you half-remember, in their first blunt telling: wolves at the door, children counting pebbles, talking birds, and bargains that are never quite fair. The tales move quickly and plainly, with wonder and dread sitting close together and old bargains keeping their edge.
Feels like wonder and dread. About love, death and freedom.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want the older, blunter versions behind stories you half-remember. Some tales are casual about death and cruelty, and the nineteenth-century phrasing can take a little patience.
Why read it
These stories give you wonder and dread in plain language, plus a clear look at how familiar tales sounded before they were softened.
Pages from the book
A girl too tired to take a bed that isn't hers.
She walked the whole night long, and next day also without stopping, until she could go no farther for weariness. Then she saw a forest-hut, and went into it, and found a room with six little beds. She did not venture to get into any of them, but crept under one, and lay down on the hard ground, to pass the night there. Just before sunset she heard a rustling, and saw six Swans come flying in at the window. They alighted on the ground and blew at each other, and blew all the feathers off, and their swan’s skins stripped off like a shirt. A carpet woven by a shuttle that is thoroughly enjoying itself.
Immediately the shuttle sprang out of her hand and out by the door. Before the threshold, however, it began to weave a carpet which was more beautiful than the eyes of man had ever yet beheld. Lilies and roses blossomed on both sides of it. And on a golden ground in the centre green branches ascended, under which bounded hares and rabbits. Stags and deer stretched their heads in between them. Brightly-colored birds were sitting in the branches above. They lacked nothing but the gift of song. The shuttle leapt hither and thither, and everything seemed to grow of its own accord. The moment birdsong turns into gossip you can follow.
No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window. He went and listened, and then noticed that it was the sparrows who were chattering together, and telling one another of all kinds of things which they had seen in the fields and woods. Eating the Snake had given him power to understand the language of animals! Jacob Grimm.Wilhelm Grimm married Dortchen Wild, the neighbor who supplied many of the tales, including 'Hansel and Gretel,' telling them to him across a garden wall.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Grimm's Fairy Tales for me?
- You may like it if you want the older, blunter versions behind stories you half-remember. Some tales are casual about death and cruelty, and the nineteenth-century phrasing can take a little patience.
- What is Grimm's Fairy Tales like?
- The tales move quickly and plainly, with wonder and dread sitting close together and old bargains keeping their edge. Feels like wonder and dread. About love, death and freedom.
- What should I read after Grimm's Fairy Tales?
- If you liked Grimm's Fairy Tales, try Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne), Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (E. Nesbit) and Short Fiction (Thomas Hardy).
A taste of the feed
What a storm looks like to the one person aboard not frightened of it.
Phileas Fogg, with body erect and legs wide apart, standing like a sailor, gazed without staggering at the swelling waters. The young woman, who was seated aft, was profoundly affected as she looked out upon the ocean, darkening now with the twilight, on which she had ventured in so frail a vessel. Above her head rustled the white sails, which seemed like great white wings. The boat, carried forward by the wind, seemed to be flying in the air.
Around the World in Eighty Days · Jules Verne
What lovers say when they are trying to invent the sweetest words.
She was frightened at first, but when she saw that it was Romeo himself, and no stranger, she too was glad, and, he standing in the garden below and she leaning from the window, they spoke long together, each one trying to find the sweetest words in the world, to make that pleasant talk that lovers use. And the tale of all they said, and the sweet music their voices made together, is all set down in a golden book, where you children may read it for yourselves some day.
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare · E. Nesbit
A lifetime of milking, written into a woman's forehead.
Her monotonous milking at the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead—perhaps by long pressure against the cows. Here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating milk-streams.
Short Fiction · Thomas Hardy
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed