About the Author

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.

The Brothers Grimm were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors. They are among the most well-known storytellers of European folk tales, and their work popularized such stories as "Cinderella," "The Frog Prince," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rapunzel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and "Snow White." Their first collection of folk tales, Children's and Household Tales, was published in 1812. The popularity of the Grimms' collected folk tales has endured well beyond their lifetimes. The tales are available in hundreds of translations and have been made into popular Disney films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.

Alison Larkin was born in Washington, DC, adopted at six weeks old by British parents, and raised in England and Africa. After graduating from Royal Holloway College, London University, and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a playwright and classical actress on the British stage. Then, at twenty-eight, she found her birth mother, who was living in Bald Mountain, Tennessee. The experience turned her into a stand-up comic. She was soon headlining at the Comic Strip in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, while maintaining her theatrical career. She also spent three years under a studio development contract to star in her own sitcom with ABC, CBS, and Jim Henson Productions. Her unusually wide range of voices can be heard in cartoons and movies, from work by James Cameron and Robert Altman to Pocahontas and The Wonder Pets. The audiobook of The English American, narrated by Alison, won an AudioFile Earphones Award. She has narrated over thirty audi books and lives in the Berkshires, western Massachusetts, with her husband and two children.

Joseph Jacobs, (1854-1916) was an Australian-born English folklore scholar, one of the most popular nineteenth-century adapters of children's fairy tales. He was also a historian of pre-expulsion English Jewry, a historian of Jewish culture, and a literary scholar.