60 Great Books Bauman Rare Books - 46 - “Once Upon A Time…”: Handsomely Bound First Edition In English Of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Illustrated By George Cruikshank 44. GRIMM, Jacob and Wilhelm. German Popular Stories. London, 1823, 1826. Two volumes. 12mo, early 20th-century full brown morocco gilt, custom clamshell box. $22,000. First editions in English (first issue of Volume I; first printing of Volume II) of Grimms’ famous fairy tales, including “Snow White,” “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty,” illustrated with two engraved title pages and 20 full-page etchings by George Cruikshank (“perhaps his best work”), handsomely bound in full morocco by Bayntun-Riviere. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting German popular tales as early as 1805 and published the first and second volumes of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812 and 1814. Its publication brought immediate andworldwide fame to the brothers Grimmand provided the foundation for their influential and groundbreaking studies in German philology and grammar (See PMM 281). The 1823 edition in English of German Popular Stories was the “first anywhere to be fully illustrated” and the first that truly targeted children (Darton, 216). “The Cruikshank illustrations, which the Grimms themselves admired, remain inextricably associated with the tales” (Carpenter & Prichard, 230). They are “representative of the best work Cruikshank ever produced” (Les Livres de l’Enfance). Among other famous Grimm tales, these volumes contain “Rumpel-Stilts-Kin,” “SnowDrop” (Snow White), “Rose-Bud” (Sleeping Beauty), “Tom Thumb,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Golden Goose,” “The Frog-Prince” and “Ashputtel” (Cinderella). 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). Plates in Volume I printed in sepia, as often found. With engraved title pages; bound without Volume II half title, Volume I blanks, and publisher’s advertisements in either volume. Cohn 369. A very few marginal smudges, minor offsetting from plates to text. A handsomely bound, about-fine copy. “Revolutionized the conventional English attitude to fairy tales, and rehabilitated fantasy as generally acceptable readingmatter for the young.”– Carpenter & Prichard
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