Read the excerpt from "How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale."Though it is impossible to clarify fully why certain tales were deleted or placed in footnotes in later editions, we do know that "Death and the Goose Boy” was omitted because of its baroque literary features; "The Strange Feast,” because of its close resemblance to "Godfather Death”; "The Stepmother,” because of its fragmentary nature and cruelty; and "The Faithful Animals,” because it came from the Siddhi-Kür, a collection of Mongolian tales. From the first edition in 1812/1815 to the final one in 1857, the Grimms received numerous versions of tales already in their collection and new tales from strangers, friends, and colleagues, and they often decided to replace one tale with another version, to delete some of the tales, or to include variants in their footnotes.

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