Recommendations from our site
“This is a novel that was published in 2013 by an Australian novelist, Kate Forsyth. She did a lot of research and tells the life story of Dortchen Wild, who was one of the key contributors to the Brothers Grimm. She tracked down and dated the stories that Dortchen Wild told more accurately than any scholar had before. In the book, you really get the sense of the world that they lived in and the colour of that period, the bonnets and cravats and laudanum and candlelight, the Napoleonic invasions that made life very difficult for people living in Germany at the time. At the same time, Kate Forsyth has taken a lot of license in the storytelling. It’s very much a novel that addresses one of the core questions we have about Dortchen Wild. As far as we can tell from the letters and diaries and so on that she left behind, she was a very gentle person. She was in love with Wilhelm Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm, and ended up marrying him. But she told these stories that are often incredibly dark.” Read more...
The best books on Fairy Tale Tellers
Nicholas Jubber, Travel Writer
