The Wild Girl
Kate Forsyth
The Wild Girl
Kate Forsyth
One of the great untold love stories - how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales - filled with drama and passion, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars.
Growing up next door to the Grimm brothers in Hesse-Cassel, a small German kingdom, Dortchen Wild told Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in the famous fairy tale collection.
Dortchen first met the Grimm brothers in 1805, when she was twelve. One of six sisters, Dortchen lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, a town famous for its grand royal palace, its colossal statue of Herkules, and a fairytale castle of turrets and spires built as a love nest for the Prince-Elector’s mistress. Dortchen was the same age as Lotte Grimm and the two became best friends.
In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French. Napoleon created a new Kingdom of Westphalia, under the rule of his dissolute young brother Jérôme. The Grimm brothers began collecting fairy tales that year, wanting to save the old stories told in spinning-circles and by the fire from the domination of French culture.
Dortchen’s father was cruel and autocratic, and he beat and abused her. He frowned on the friendship between his daughters and the poverty-stricken Grimm Brothers. Dortchen had to meet Wilhelm in secret to tell him her stories. All the other sisters married and moved away, but Dortchen had to stay home and care for her sick parents. Even after the death of her father, Dortchen and Wilhelm could not marry - the Grimm brothers were so poor they were surviving on a single meal a day.
After the overthrow of Napoleon and the eventual success of the fairy tale collection, Dortchen and Wilhelm were at last able to marry. They lived happily ever after with Wilhelm’s elder brother Jakob for the rest of their lives.
Review
Chris Gordon
Kate Forsyth is a storyteller whose books are spun out of magic and folklore. Her most famous work, Bitter Greens, is the retelling of Rapunzel. In all her stories there are princesses and wild forests, imagined terrors and real darkness, escapes to be made and arms to fall into. She is the ultimate giver of dreams, taking a fairytale and turning it around to provide even more possibilities, for both younger readers and adults.
In this latest novel, written for adults and based on historical details, she gives us the story of the most famous storytellers of all. Dortchen Wild grows up next door to the Grimm brothers in Hesse-Cassel, a small German kingdom. It is Dortchen who tells Wilhelm Grimm some of the most powerful and compelling stories that will later appear in the brothers’ famous fairytale collection. The two fall in love, but were only able to marry after the country, torn apart by the Napoleon War, was safe and her father, a miserable, violent man, had died. They waited, and lived happily ever after.
As Neil Gaiman says in his work Fragile Things, ‘[S]ome stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.’
In this beautifully written, and yes romantic story, Forsyth has done lovers of fairytales a great service, giving us the ultimate homage.
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