German Popular Stories, Translated from the Kinder und Haus Marchen, Collected by M.M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. [ Including: Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty].

GRIMM, Jacob Ludwig Karl and Wilhelm Carl. Illustrated by George Cruikshank.

Item Number: 118064

London: C. Baldwyn, 1823; James Robins, 1826.

First edition, first issue in English of both volumes of Grimms’ famous fairy tales, including Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty. With the first state of the engraved title page of Volume I, without the umlaut in the word Märchen (“later issues of the first edition of Volume I had the umlauts inserted”— Quayle, 38). Vol. II with the half-title and advertisements. Small octavo, bound in full scarlet crushed morocco by Riviere & Sons with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, triple gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, all edges gilt, illustrated with with two engraved title pages and 20 full-page etchings by George Cruikshank. German Popular Stories was Cruikshank’s first illustrated book. Following the success of this work, he illustrated the works of his friend Charles Dickens. Translated by Edgar Taylor. From the library of banker and rare book collector Frederick Stanhope Peck with his bookplate to the pastedown. Laid in is an original bill of sale from Parke-Bernet Galleries dated April 21-22nd 1947. In fine condition. An exceptional example, with noted provenance, as these have been in a private collection since the 1940s.

As early as 1805, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting German popular tales. They published the first and second volumes of Kinder-und Hausmärchen in 1812 and 1814. Its publication brought immediate and worldwide fame to the brothers Grimm and provided the foundation for their influential and groundbreaking studies in German philology and grammar (PMM 281). The 1823 edition in English of German Popular Stories was the “first anywhere to be fully illustrated” as well as the first to truly target children (Darton, 216). Moreover, the English translation by Edgar Taylor (and his relatives) “revolutionized the conventional English attitude to fairy tales and rehabilitated fantasy as generally acceptable reading-matter for the young… The Cruikshank illustrations, which the Grimms themselves admired, remain inextricably associated with the tales” and are considered among his best works (Carpenter & Prichard, 230). They have been called “the first real, kindly agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations for a child’s book in England” (Charles Welsh). Among other famous Grimm tales, these volumes contain “Rumpel-Stilts-Kin,” “Snow-Drop” (Snow White), “Rose-Bud” (Sleeping Beauty), “Tom Thumb,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Golden Goose,” “The Frog-Prince” and “Ashputtel” (Cinderella).