Paths Through the Forest: A Biography of the Brothers Grimm

By Murray B. Peppard

Book Overview

Frontispiece: Black-and-white portrait of the Brothers Grimm. Includes Chronological Table, Bibliography and Index. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888173912
• ISBN13: 9781888173918
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Akadine Press
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good overview of Grimms Brothers' lives and times

Peppard succeeds very well in creating an overview for the layman interested in understanding the lives and times of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. Peppard ties Grimms' research in folktales and folk stories to the nostalgic romantic era in which they lived, coupled with a desire to chronicle what they felt was intrinsically German lore before it was lost to the French culture that was being forced upon Germany during the Napoleonic Wars. Although well-written, one of the oddities of this particular dual biography is Peppard's tendency to chronicle their lives through a series of specific chapter-based episodes. The problem with this approach, as opposed to a pure chronological outlay, is that the chapters tend to fold back upon each other, creating a level of repetition and redundant overlay. At a certain point, the reader may have the sense that he has read all of the material before, simply in a different form.