Around the Web: The Brothers Grimm Did Much More Than Tell Fairy Tales

One of the lost works discovered in AMU's University Library with annotations from the Brothers Grimm
Adam Mickiewicz University

The Brothers Grimm Did Much More Than Tell Fairy Tales by Aaron Boorstein at Smithsonian Magazine (May 31, 2024)

"A recent discovery in a Polish library of 27 books that were thought to have been lost sheds light on the breadth of the German scholars’ work."

It's not a lengthy article, but here's a bit to whet your interest:

To aid their research on folklore and linguistics, the brothers looked to their private library of 8,000 books. Today, most of these books reside in a library in Berlin after Wilhelm’s son, Hermann, transferred them there, according to Adam Mickiewicz University's (AMU) Ewa Konarzewska-Michalak. Others were scattered and lost over the decades.

Last year, however 27 works from the Brothers Grimm's private collection were found in AMU’s library in Poznań, Poland. The works, dating from the 1400s through the second half of the 1800s, fit into three categories: incunables, prints and books, Artnet's Vittoria Benzine reports. According to AMU curator Renata Wilgosiewicz-Skutecka, the librarians were able to identify them thanks to handwritten notes by the Grimms. These inscriptions also gave insight into the Grimms’ working method and choices of themes and motifs in their work.

The best news, after the actual discovery, is that the books are being digitized. Yay for librarians and researchers! And, yes, I do have a degree in Information (Library) Science so I greatly appreciate their work.

Around the Web: How to Fight a Fairy Tale by Jenny Hamilton

How to Fight a Fairy Tale: Retellings in the Age of Romantasy by Jenny Hamilton (PUBLISHED ON MAY 15, 2024) on Reactor.

The trouble with structuring a book around a fairy tale is that fairy tales make no sense—but books have to.

Excerpts to whet your interest--lots of authors and titles are included in the article, too:

Fairy tales haunt us. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen an author speak about the fairy tale that kept them up at night, I’d have enough dollars to buy enough fairy tale collections that I would never sleep again. Fantasy with its magics and monarchies, and romance with its mandatory happily-ever-afters are particularly unable to let sleeping fairy tales lie, so it’s perhaps not surprising that smushing the two genres together has produced a truly awe-inspiring level of fairy tale poisoning.

... What if books can also just depend on the imagery, rules, and structures of fairy tales to avoid the challenge of worldbuilding? What if a fairy tale world, but completely different characters and situations? (I say this without judgment. Worldbuilding is famously hard, and fairy tale worlds are rad. Slash terrifying.)

... Then you have the books that are asking what for? What’s everyone acting like this for? How should we be understanding it? I grew up on these.