This book contains all four of Ludwig Bechstein's fairy tale collections in one mega-volume of about 800 pages. Largely overshadowed now by the Grimm's fairy tales, Bechstein's collections were actually very popular when first published (1823, 1845, 1856, 1857). In fact, they were more popular than the Grimm's collection of tales for a time, as Bechstein wrote the tales specifically for children and adolescents (even the original publications were illustrated), while the Brothers Grimm originally anticipated adults as their target audience; only later were the tales illustrated and geared more and more towards children.

While both Bechstein and the Brothers Grimm reworked their tales stylistically, Bechstein liberally made use of both irony and humor. Similar to the satirical fairy tales of the late 18th century (Johann Karl August Musäus, Christoph Martin Wieland for example) Bechstein's heroes and heroines know the rules and limitations of magic and even engage in humorous comments concerning the same. From a thematic standpoint, Bechstein's fairy tales are also noted for their gender egalitarianism. There are equal numbers of wicked men and women, and the female characters are generally never silenced or given unnecessary blame or punishments. Finally, Bechstein's tales also often poke fun at society, by both satrizing it and setting authority on its head. Unfortunately, this was also one of the reasons why Grimm's fairy tales became more and more popular; Bechstein's tales began to be regarded as not being "folksy" enough.

The one thing that I find extremely annoying about this particular book is the fact that the table of contents only lists the starting points of each of the four fairy tale collections. The specific tales of each of the collections as well as their starting pages, are not listed in the table of contents. Thus, if you are trying to read a particular tale, or if you are trying to compare/contrast one fairy tale with another, this becomes extremely frustrating, if not impossible. Also, fairy tales are often read to children, and this does not have to necessarily occur in systematic order (it is often done randomly, with the reader or story teller selecting stories that a child might like). However, the above set-up virtually forces the reader/storyteller to read the stories one by one, from beginning to end, as there is no list of the stories available, only the titles of each specific collection. I have actually been in possession of this collection for quite some time, but only recently managed to read it, as I did not have the time to read the collection from beginning to end. If there had been a list of each and every story in the table of contents, I would have picked and chosen some stories to read, but as it was, I had to wait until I had sufficient time to actually read the entire mega-volume. ( )