"These famous people wrote for children"

Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628. He was a french author who took part in a French Academy where he made a comparison between antique authors and modern writers who did not believe in magic tales and fantasy as he did.
Perrault had peculiar characteristics; he was able to take some English stories and translate them into French language, such as "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Blue Beard", "Cinderella", among others. Another one was whenever he published a book, he wrote his son's name, Pierre, and not his own name.
Charles published his first book in 1697, which contained eight simple stories called "Stories or Tales from Times Past with Morals adding at the front " Tales of Mother Goose". All his stories were well- known as well as his narratives, which belonged to stories-telling tradition transmitted and shared by a large number of generations. Charles Perrault also wrote verse narratives, for instance "Griselda", "The Ridiculous Wishes and Donkey Skin". Each of them was published separately, in 1691, 1693, and 1694 respectively.
Charles Perrault died in 1703.


Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Whilhem Carl Grimm were brothers. The first one was born on January 4th in 1785 and the second one was born on February 24th in 1786, both in Hanau, Germany. The whole family moved to Steinau but then, both brothers moved to Kassel to stay with their aunt to start secondary school. Four years later, they studied law at the University Of Marburg where they recieved a prize for their tremendous scholarly work on linguistics, Folklore and mediaval studies to be published later on.
From 1842 to 1852, the Grimms continued their scholarly work and political activities, however, they gave up thier formal appoitments at the University Of Berlin in order to dedicate themselves to their own studies and research on what they were really interested in, "Folktales".
Grimm's brothers published their first volume called "Children' and Household Tales", which contained eighty six folktales. In 1814, they published the second volume with the same name, including seventy stories. There were also more than two hundred stories together with ten children legends in thier final version. It became the best known and most influencial book ever created in the German language. Then, they published two volumes about German legends called "Deutsche Sagen".
Jacob and Whilhem wrote many stories in German language since they wanted to preserve such material as part of German cultural and literary history, so that their tales came into the posession of the youngest readers.
Jacob died on September 20th in 1859 and Wilhelm died on December 16th in 1863.


Hans Christian Andersen was Danish who was born on April 2nd in 1805. When he was a child he lived in a small but self- satisfied provincial centre of Odense, his native town, where he spent his first fourteen years of his life. In the authography of his youth, "Levnedsbogen", Andersen emphasised the way of living in Odense, for instance the perservation about popular old customs and superstition unknown in Copenhagen. Apart from that, he wanted to appeal the disturbing social experiences from the lowest ranks of society in order to cast off the trammels of poverty, break with his social inheritance and just focus on what he was fond of "the world of art".
Once an ederly woman told Andersen that the folk tales would provide him a starting- point for his paraphrases of the old stories and for the tales he created himself. As his father had contact with the theatre, Andersen could acquire knowledge and fulfil his dreams and aspirations as well. There, he was the author of numerous plays, translator and adapter of foreign plays. In fact, he became famous in the mid of 1830`s when his novels and fairy tales enjoyed widespread circulation in Germany. His first text Andersen called a "fairy tale, giving it the title "From the Botton of the Ocean" which appeared in 1827 in Johan Ludvig Heiberg's literary magazine. However, it was not a real fairy tale but a fantastic story, a comic fantasy in verse. Then, the text was later incorporated as chapter twelve in his first book "Fodriese" in 1829. He published his first real fairy tale "Døgningen" (The Dead Man) together with his first collection of poems called "Digte"in 1830. Five years later, he completely rewrote a tale called "The Travelling Companion", using a style and narrative technique and then, his first two booklets appeared, which he called "Fairy tales told to the children".
Hans Andersen published six novels such as "The Improvisatore" (1835), "O.T" (1836), "Only a Fiddler" (1837), "The two Baronesses" (1848), "To be or not to be" (1857) and "Lucky Peer" (1870). Each of them was great hits and translated into many languages for all over the world. Andersen also published several collections of poems like "Phantasier og Skizzer" (Phantasies and Sketches - 1831), "Samlede Digte" (Collected poems - 1833), "Murersang" (1836). "Rosenknoppen" (1842), among others. Many Danish composers set music to Andersen's poems as did Edvard Greig and thus, children could enjoy all his poems as well as his fairy tales.
Ater several years of suffering from a serious illness, Hans Christian Andersen died on August 4th at "Rolighed", the country where he lived his final period of life.