Introduction

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were pioneers in the field of folklore, collecting stories through Germanys rich oral tradition in order to preserve a history that might otherwise have been lost forever. In doing so, they popularized some of todays most enduring fairy tales. The Frog Prince; or, Iron Henry was the first tale in the 1812 edition of Grimms Fairy Tales (Kinder- und Hausmrchen). It tells the story of a spoiled princess who reluctantly befriends a frog who, unbeknownst to her, is actually a prince under a sorcerers spell. In the original tale, the curse is lifted when the princess throws the frog against a brick wall in anger, but in later years the Brothers Grimm sanitized the story, turning it into the tale we know today. The Grimms impact was so profound that it is hard to imagine a world without these stories as they continue to be passed down through generations. We are honoured to reproduce this manuscript from the Bodmer Foundation as the first release in our Fairy Tale Collection.