Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
A compendium of the Brothers Grimm’s most beloved fairy tales, newly translated and accompanied by an array of vintage illustrations
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In honor of the tales’ 200th anniversary, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm brings to life their timeless magic and the special illustrations they inspired.
It has been two hundred years since the two brothers from Kassel, Germany, first published, in 1812, "Hansel and Gretel," "Sleeping Beauty," "Rapunzel," "Snow White," and many other fairy tales that have since become classics. It is nearly impossible today to imagine a time when the world—from children’s books to literature to movies to everyday quips—was not saturated in the robust legacy of these classic tales. They have become code words in popular culture, where "Beware the wolf," or "You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince," or even simply "Cinderella," is understood by everyone. But the Grimms’ influence has been not only literary, but also visual. The Grimms’ tales were a vital engine for a whole new caliber of artistic activity, not only in Germany, but across Europe and North America. The partnership between artists and publishers of the Grimms’ tales helped change the way children’s books were made and marketed, and this, in turn, had a profound impact on the history of illustrated books.
Today, however, compilations of the Grimms’ tales are either not illustrated, or they relegate the illustrations to a minor role with poor, sparse reproductions. The purpose of this book is to generously illustrate the original tales as never before so that they can not only be enjoyed as works of art accessible to the whole family, but also appreciated as an important part of the legacy of the tales. In this new approach, 27 of the most famous of the Grimms’ tales, such as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Snow White," as well as lesser-known gems such as "The Fisherman and His Wife" and "Tom Thumb’s Travels," are each paired—one artist per story—with illustrations by some the most famous artists from the 1820s to the 1950s. The illustrations in this book include a roster of influential international artists from Germany, Britain, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the United States, whose work I discovered researching in archives in the United States and Europe. Highlights include German pioneer Gustav Süs, whose handcolored lithographs anticipate the playful images of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit.
Protocartoons from as early as the 1860s are also featured, as is the work of England’s most popular illustrators of their day, Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham. Golden-age prodigy and Danish artist Kay Nielsen also produced sensational illustrations the Grimms’ tales and later worked for Disney, as did the best-selling Swedish-American illustrator of two tales in this book, Gustaf Tenggren. Later, in the 1940s, award-winning Swiss artist Herbert Leupin playfully explored saturated color and the contours of cartooning in his remarkably modern images. In 2005, the Grimms’ fairy tales were selected for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, an initiative to safeguard documents vital to world history. It has been nearly ten years since a major translation of the Grimms’ fairy tales has been published in English, and in the wake of the increased appreciation for the unabridged tales, the time is right for a new translation. The translator Matthew Price and I were surprised by what we found in the original German: It is a text full of feeling, far more humorous and crackling with wit and spice than either of us remembered from the many adaptations we read growing up. We therefore focused on bringing the pleasure of the original words to the forefront to communicate the inner theater of the tales, while keeping the English lively and accessible to all readers. By turns graceful and poignant, and spirited and dramatic, the Grimms’ tales offer plenty of adventure, pitch-perfect humor, and life lessons in a delightful spectrum of human emotion that warrants rediscovery by readers of all ages.
—Noel Daniel
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Famous Danish artist Kay Nielsen created this watercolor of "The Three feathers" in 1925. His exotic watercolors caused a sensation during illustration’s golden age in the early 20th century.
