The Most Beautiful Illustrations From 200 Years Of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales

"The Fisherman And His Wife"
http://www.authorama.com/grimms-fairy-tales-10.html

"The Fisherman And His Wife"
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fisherman_and_His_Wife

You can hear my recorded version of "The Fisherman And His Wife" at 
https://soundcloud.com/alan-archibald

The Most Beautiful Illustrations from 200 Years of Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales

by Maria Popova

Maurice Sendak, Lisbeth Zwerger, Edward Gorey, David Hockney, Wanda Gág, Shaun Tan, and more.

In his timeless meditation on fantasy and the psychology of fairy tales, J.R.R. Tolkien asserted that there is no such thing as writing “for children.” The sentiment has since been echoed by generations of beloved storytellers:“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time,” E.B. White toldThe Paris Review. “You have to write up, not down.” Neil Gaiman argued that protecting children from the dark does them a grave disservice. “I don’t write for children,” Maurice Sendak told Stephen Colbert in his final interview. “I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’”

Perhaps more than anything else, this respect for children’s inherent intelligence and their ability to sit with difficult emotions is what makes the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm so enduringly enchanting. In their original conception, they broke with convention in other ways as well — rather than moralistic or didactic, they were beautifully blunt and unaffected, celebratory of poetry’s ennobling effect on the spirit. The brothers wrote in the preface to the first edition in 1812 that the storytelling between the covers was intended “to give pleasure to anyone who could take pleasure in it.”

Their beloved stories have pleasured the popular imagination for two centuries and have inspired generations of artists to continually reinterpret and reimagine them. Gathered here — after similar collections of the world’s most beautiful illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit — are the finest and most culturally notable such Grimm reimaginings of which I’m aware.

"The Story Of One Who Set Out To Study Fear"

More illustrations at http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/20/best-brothers-grimm-illustrations/