2 volumes. xii, 240; [iii]-256, [2] pp. Illustrated with 22 etched plates by George Cruikshank, including the added vignette titles. (12mo) 7x4, modern full brown levant morocco ruled in gilt, spines ruled & lettered in gilt, raised bands, gilt-ruled turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt; bound by Bayntun Riviere. First Edition in English.

First English language publication of perhaps the most influential compilations of fairy tales. This is the rare first issue, without an umlaut over the "a" in "Marchen" in the title of Volume I. This copy without the publisher's advertisements called for at the end of Volume I and the beginning and end of Volume II, though it does have an "Advertisement" to this book in Volume II (pp. iii-iv); without the half-title in Volume II, otherwise complete. The Morgan Library, Early Children's Books catalogue remarks, "The stories that we know today as Grimm’s Fairy Tales were collected from oral tradition by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, philologists and pioneer folklorists. They began to publish the results of their work in 1812, in Germany, under the title Kinder- und Haus-Märchen. The tales first appeared in English in 1823, with the publication of the first volume of German Popular Stories. The translator was Edgar Taylor, and the book’s publication was an auspicious event for at least two reasons. It launched an era in which folklore and the fairy tale would stimulate writers to produce an increasingly imaginative literature for children. And German Popular Stories also put before the public the remarkable illustrations—perhaps his best work—of George Cruikshank. The illustrations evoke wonderfully the grotesque, awesome, yet matter-of-fact qualities of witch and goblin, of Frog Prince, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and all the other characters that people the tales. As illustrations to these fairy tales Cruikshank’s etchings have never been surpassed." Of the illustrations by Cruikshank, John Ruskin declared "the etchings are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented. You cannot look at them too much, or copy them too often..."