The first volume of the Brothers Grimm fairy-tale collection was published in 1812.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm titled the collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen, meaning Children’s and Household Tales. The first volume contained 86 stories, while a second volume followed in 1815. The brothers presented the work as a collection of traditional stories rather than as a set of wholly original inventions.
The Grimms gathered material from several storytellers and written sources in German-speaking regions. Their informants included members of educated families as well as people connected with oral storytelling traditions. Later editions changed wording, structure, and content, so the 1812 text is not identical to the version many modern readers know.
A common mix-up is to date the complete first edition to 1812. The collection’s first volume appeared that year, but the two-volume first edition was completed in 1815.