Most of the fairy tales that we grew up with we know thanks to the Brothers Grimm. Jack Zipes takes us behind the romantics mythology of the wandering brothers. Zipes examines the interaction between the Grimms' lives and their work. He reveals the Grimms' personal struggle to overcome social prejudice and poverty, as well as their political efforts as scholars and civil servants toward unifying the German states. By deftly interweaving the social, political, and personal elements of the lives of the Brothers Grimm, Zipes rescues them from sentimental obscurity. No longer figures in fairy tale, the Brothers Grimm emerge as powerful creators, real men who established the fairy tale as one of our great literary institutions. Part biography, part critical assessment, part social history, "The Brothers Grimm" provides a complex and very real story about fairy tales and the modern world.