The Brothers Grimm and the Notes that Saved Our Fairy Tales

"It was perhaps just the right time to record these tales since those people who should be preserving them are becoming more and more scarce."

Once upon a time, Cinderella was almost lost to history. Same with Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, these stories circulated by word of mouth through the Hessen region of what is now Germany.¹ But the elderly people who shared these stories were dying and with them, the tales—or so the story goes.

Two bro…