ABOUT THE AUTHORS

THE BROTHERS GRIMM

Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were born in Germany in the late eighteenth century. In the early nineteenth century, while attending school at the University of Marburg, they developed a passion for folktales and folktale studies. In 1812, they published their first collection of folktales, Children’s and Household Tales, which was reprinted and revised many times up until 1857. By the time of their deaths, the Brothers Grimm had published more than two hundred fairy tales based on German and Scandinavian mythologies. Their stories have since been translated into more than one hundred languages. To this day, the Brothers Grimm are considered the fathers of fairy tales.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805–1875)

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish novelist, playwright, and poet. He began writing fairy tales in the early eighteenth century and published the first two volumes of his collection in 1835 and continued until 1872. At first, Andersen’s stories were not well received, but by the time of his death he was best known for his fairy tales. To date, his stories have been translated into more than 125 languages, and Andersen has been made a Danish National Treasure.

CHARLES PERRAULT (1628–1703)

Charles Perrault was a French author during the seventeenth century. Although he had many professions in the French government and published many written works, the first about fairy tales was published in 1697 and was titled Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose. His fairy tales were very popular in French society and are still known today as he wrote them. Many credit him as the founder of the fairy-tale genre.

JEANNE-MARIE LEPRINCE DE BEAUMONT (1711–1780)

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont was a French teacher and novelist during the eighteenth century. Sometime after 1746, while working in England as a governess, she wrote the book Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales. The publication was such a success that she was able to quit teaching and focus on her writing career. She is one of the only women credited as a fairy-tale founding author and was one of the first authors to write fairy tales designed for children.

CARLO COLLODI (1826–1890)

Carlo Collodi was born in Florence, Italy. Among his many writing credentials, he was a playwright and wrote articles and satirical stories for newspapers. His introduction into fairy tales came in 1875 when he published I racconti delle fate, an Italian translation of Charles Perrault’s work. In 1880 he wrote the work he is most remembered for today, Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio).

ASBJØRNSEN & MOE

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812–1885) and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe (1813–1882) were Norwegian writers in the nineteenth century. After being friends for over a decade, they published their first collection of Norwegian folktales in 1841. They were inspired greatly by the Brothers Grimm and published more than one hundred fairy tales over the course of their careers.

CHRIS COLFER is an American author born in the twentieth century. He was given his first fairy-tale treasury in 1994 and hasn’t put it down since. Thanks to an overly active imagination and an early introduction to caffeine, he had lots of questions regarding fairy-tale characters. These questions later influenced him to write the Land of Stories series. He’s honored to share the stories of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Carlo Collodi, and Asbjørnsen & Moe with new readers around the world.

BRANDON DORMAN lives near Wylie, Texas, with his wife and four little ones. As an illustrator, he has created magical pictures for hundreds of book covers and somewhere around twenty-one and a half picture books, two of which he has authored himself, Pirates of the Sea! and Santa’s Stowaway. You can visit Brandon at brandondorman.com.