Jacob Grimm

Jacob Grimm Biography
Author (1785–1863)

Jacob Grimm was a 19th century German scholar who, along with brother Wilhelm, published Grimms' Fairy Tales, a collection famous for its children's stories.

Synopsis
Jacob Grimm was born on January 4, 1785, in Hanau, Germany. He and younger brother Wilhelm studied German folklore and oral traditions, publishing a collection of stories that eventually became known as Grimms' Fairy Tales, and includes narratives like Cinderella and Rapunzel. A prolific author, Jacob also did pioneering research on languages and created the principles known as "Grimm's law." He died in Berlin, Germany, on September 20, 1863.

Early Life and Career
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was born on January 4, 1785, in the town of Hanau, Germany, to Dorothea and Philipp Grimm. Jacob was the eldest of several siblings, including the brother born soonest after him, Wilhelm. Their father worked as a lawyer, and both Jacob and Wilhelm eventually pursued legal studies at the University of Marburg.

Jacob went on to work as a royal librarian for Napoleon's brother, Jérôme, king of Westphalia, in 1808, and later worked as a municipal auditor. In 1816, Jacob joined his brother to work at a library in Kassel, where Wilhelm had obtained a position as secretary.

'Grimms' Fairy Tales'
Influenced by German Romanticism, a prevailing movement of the time, the brothers robustly studied the folklore of their region, with an emphasis on recording village oral storytelling that was vanishing with the advent of new technology. Jacob's and Wilhelm's work culminated in the book Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), the first volume of which was published in 1812. A second volume followed in 1815. The collection would later come to be known as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Though the brothers wrote that the tales were taken primarily from German village oral traditions, the stories were in fact an amalgamation of oral and previously printed fairy tales, along with information shared by friends, family members and acquaintances, with non-German influences. Various editions of the tales would be produced over the next several decades. The work would also go on to be translated into dozens of languages, and become regarded as a pioneering force in the field of folkloric investigation.