About Alcazar AudioWorks
Alcazar AudioWorks is an audiobook producer and publisher for all ages. Founded in 1999, they specialize in classical stories, many of which are specially commissioned for home school curricula.
About The Brothers Grimm
Wilhelm Grimm and his brother, Jacob, are most famous for their classical collections of folk songs and folktales, especially Children's and Household Tales, which is generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Stories such as "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty" have been retold countless times, but the Brothers Grimm first wrote them down. In their collaboration, Wilhelm, who was the more imaginative and literary of the two, selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob was responsible for the scholarly work.
Wilhelm was born in Hanau, Germany, in 1786. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Wilhelm was young. His mother, Dorothea, struggled to pay the education of the children. With financial help from Dorothea's sister, Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to Kasel to attend the Lyzeum. Wilhelm always suffered from poor health, which made regular work difficult. He was nonetheless more animated, jovial, and sociable than Jacob. After studying law at Marburg, he worked as a secretary at Kassel, where Jacob served as librarian. In 1812, the year their fairy tales were first published, the Grimms were surviving on a single meal a day. Between 1821 and 1822, the brothers raised extra money by collecting three volumes of folktales. With these publications they wanted to show that Germans shared a similar culture and to advocate the unification process of the small independent kingdoms and principalities.
In 1829, the brothers moved to Gottingen, where Wilhelm became assistant librarian and Jacob librarian. In 1835, Wilhelm was appointed professor, but they were dismissed two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hanover constitution by King Ernest Augustus. In 1840, the brothers accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to go to Berlin. There, as members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, they lectured at the university. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with their most ambitious enterprise, the Deutsches Worterbuch, a large German dictionary. Its first volume appeared in 1854. The work, which totaled sixteen volumes, was finished in the 1960s.
The Grimms made major contributions in many fields, notably in the studies of heroic myth and of ancient religion and law. They worked very close, even after Wilhelm married in 1825. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died of infection in Berlin on December 16, 1859, and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863.
About Beatrix Potter
British author and artist Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated many children's books in the late nineteenth century. She is best known for her enchanting tales and endearing drawings of woodland creatures in human clothes, most notably Peter Rabbit. Her stories are simple and direct; it was important to Potter to not "write down" to the young listener or reader. Her beloved classic stories remain popular throughout the world today.
Potter was born on July 28, 1866, in Kensington, London, to a wealthy Victorian family. She was educated by governesses who encouraged her to write and who taught her art and music. When she was twenty-seven, she drew a picture and wrote a story for a sick friend about four little rabbits. Nine years later, the now-classic story "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" was published, and it became an overnight success.
Potter's literary work diminished after 1918 because her eyesight deteriorated. She devoted her last thirty years to raising Herdwick sheep and investing in real estate. Potter was the first president of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, which still exists today. Potter died on December 22, 1943, in Lancashire. She bequeathed fourteen farms, including Hill Top Farm, the setting of several of her books, and 4,000 acres to the British National Trust.
About Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was the most popular and admired American poet of the nineteenth century. Known for his narrative historical and mythic poems, his most famous works include Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Tales of Wayside Inn. Versatile as well as prolific, Longfellow also won fame as a writer of
short ballads and lyrics, and experimented in the essay, the short
story, the novel, and the verse drama.
About Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was a French author and intellectual. Known as a founding writer of the fairy tale genre, he rewrote numerous folk tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, and Puss in Boots. His stories, which continue to enjoy worldwide acclaim, have been adapted to opera, ballet, theater, and film.
About Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was born in Cheetham, England. She and her family immigrated to the United States after her father died and their financial circumstances became strained. Once in Tennessee, she began to help support her mother and siblings by earning money by writing stories. Over her lifetime, she wrote more than forty books, many of which reflected her own family's riches-to-rags circumstances, including her most well-known novels, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.
About Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was born in Scotland in 1859. His best-known story, The Wind in the Willows, began as a series of bedtime stories for his son. It was published in 1908. Grahame died in 1932 but his book lived on. The Wind in the Willows has been adapted for the stage, film, and television, and it has never been out of print.
About Robert Browning
Robert Browning (1812–1889), born in London, was a major English poet of the Victorian age. He is noted for his psychological insight into character and motivations, his colloquial English, and his perfection of the dramatic monologue form. He influenced many modern poets, partly through his development of the dramatic monologue and his use of stream of consciousness. He was married to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
About Washington Irving
Washinton Irving (1783–1859) was an American essayist, novelist, and historian. The first American author to achieve international fame, his literary career served in many ways to consolidate the cultures of the United States and Europe.
About Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780) was the author of Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales. In 1746 she left France for London, where she had a successful publishing career. Her version of “Beauty and the Beast” has been retold countless times, both in film and on stage.
About Peter Christen Asbjørnsen
Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812–1885) was a Norwegian writer and scholar. With the help of his colleague Jørgen Moe, he compiled numerous collections of Norwegian folklore.
About Jørgen Moe
Jørgen Moe (1813–1882)
was a Norwegian folklorist, bishop, and author. He is best known for the Norske Folkeeventyr, a collection of
Norwegian folk tales which he edited in collaboration with Peter Christen
Asbjørnsen.
About Mother Goose
Mother Goose is the imaginary author of several fairy tales and nursery rhymes, often published as Mother Goose Rhymes. Known as the archetypal name for an English country woman, she is typically depicted as elderly woman wearing a tall hat and shawl, or as a goose wearing a bonnet.
About Bobbie Frohman
Bobbie Frohman, a third generation Californian, was raised in a large extended family, the niece of cowboys. Early on she developed a deep love of animals, training her dogs to perform with her at dog shows, and as a competitive barrel racer with her beloved horse, Lucky.
About David Thorn
David Thorn spent his childhood in the Channel Islands off the coast of France, was schooled in England, and then immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-three. He is retired from international commerce and currently resides in California.
