The Brothers Grimm From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World

Who were the Brothers Grimm? Despite the enormous influence the Grimms have had on our culture, they themselves remain little known and poorly understood. In "The Brothers Grimm", Jack Zipes sets the record straight. Bringing to bear his own expertise as well as new biographical information, Zipes examines the interaction between the Grimms' lives and their work. He reveals the Grimms' personal struggle to overcome social prejudice and poverty, as well as their political efforts -- as scholars and civil servants -- toward unifying the German states. By deftly interweaving the social, political and personal elements of his subjects' lives, Zipes rescues the Grimms form sentimental obscurity. No longer figures in a fairy tale, the Brothers Grimm emerge as powerful creators, real men who established the fairy tale as one of our great literary institutions. Part biography, part critical reassessment, and part social history, "The Brothers Grimm" gives us back a complex and very real story about fairy tales and the modern world. -- From publisher's description.