Thank you to NetGalley and Yale University Press for this ARC.

I'm German and while I know the Grimm's tales well from my childhood, I know next to nothing about the brothers themselves, which is why I downloaded this biography.

The Grimm Brothers are primarily known as fairy tale and legend collectors but they earned money as librarians and civil servants while their passions lay in science and literary scholarship. Their world was marred by wars and short life expectancy - tales of "a shining world of gold and pearls, but also a world of darkness and evil" had to be preserved for future generations. They were deeply bonded and spent their whole lives together under one roof, even when Wilhelm married.

This is the first full-length biography in decades and also covers the brothers’ many other groundbreaking but largely forgotten or overshadowed accomplishments, like the work on a German dictionary, grammar work that led to Grimm's Law (a systematic consonant shift) and contributions to linguistics, mythology and German culture and identity.

It's a warts and all biography, from their struggle with poverty, loss and ill health to their mentorship with Friedrich Karl von Savigny and friendship with Clemens Brentano and Achim and Bettina von Arnim, from their intellectual brilliance to their anti-Semitism and patriotism in the face of political upheaval. For example, as members of the Göttingen Seven, protesting against the king, they lost their university posts which enabled them to start undertaking the massive German dictionary project, which sadly was not completed in their lifetime and only finished in 1961 through a collaboration of German academics.

I learned a lot of new things - Jacob and Wilhelm were rather introverted and didn't go out themselves to collect stories and most
tales came from educated young townswomen and not poor old women or peasants, like they themselves purported. They didn't change too much from the original tales but edits were nevertheless made, for example to keep gender stereotypes in line with the attitudes of the time.

It's a shame that their fairy tale collections weren't commercially successful during the brothers' lifetimes but it speaks for the quality of them that they have endured over time and been made into films, plays and musicals, as well as given psychoanalysts a field day for generations.

This is a thoroughly researched, detailed and accessible account offering a rich historical background and should have broad appeal even though it's written in a scholarly manner.

“And if they have not died, then they are still living today.”