The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth proved greater than expectations for a recounting of the romance behind the classic collection of fairy tales for which the Grimm brothers’ found fame.While The Wild Girl recounts the friendship and romance of Dortchen Wild and Wilhelm Grimm, the enduring romance provides a space apart from the bleak reality of Hesse-Cassel during the Napoleonic Wars. The darker aspects of life in war-ravaged Europe are abundantly clear in the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, too poor to travel throughout Europe and collect folktales for their scholarly volume, instead relying on pieces donated from many sources. Dortchen, the middle daughter of the apothecary next-door, is one source and provides many of the most vivid and loved tales in the collections.
The Wild Girl is a rich historical tale, revealing the dark elements of Napoleonic Europe, the silent history behind the classic fairy tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and the untold story of Dortchen Wild.
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