1. Grimm's Fairy Tales: German folk literature, collected, arranged and processed by German linguists jacob green and william green.

2. Andersen's Fairy Tales: A collection of fairy tales created by Danish writer Andersen, * * * consists of 166 stories.

Second, the content is different.

1, Grimm's Fairy Tales: Wide in content and diverse in genre. Besides fairy tales, there are folk stories, jokes and fables. There are more than 200 stories in it, most of which come from folk oral legends, among which Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and Prince Frog are famous fairy tales.

2. Andersen's Fairy Tales: This work clearly shows love and hate, and enthusiastically praises the working people and their kindness and purity. Ruthlessly expose and criticize the stupidity, incompetence, greed and cruelty of princes and nobles. Among them, the famous stories are: Little Mermaid, Ugly Duckling, Little Match Girl, Thumbelina and so on.

Third, the creative background is different.

1, grimm's fairy tales: the first edition was published in 18 12. Germany was the most disastrous nation-state in Europe at that time. Since the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), Germany, which became the main battlefield, fell apart politically and economically.

Although it is still called the "Holy Roman Empire" in name, it is actually divided into a loose mixture of more than 360 principalities and free cities, and social development is seriously slow.

1806, the Napoleonic Wars sweeping Europe completely disintegrated the Holy Roman Empire. Under the conquest and rule of France, the German people's national consciousness was awakened, and their desire for German national unity and strength was unprecedentedly high.

In this situation, a large number of intellectuals devoted themselves to the national liberation movement. But at this time, the disintegration of German society and the differences between many principalities, including language and culture, have become obstacles to national unity.

In order to eliminate this cultural obstacle, German intellectuals began to promote cultural nationalism, hoping to promote national unity with the help of the ancient Germanic national culture. German romantics in this period, while adhering to the spirit of romantic culture, also turned their attention to the traditional folk culture, sorted out and studied German folk literature, and carried it forward.

In this way, the outstanding achievements of German romanticism in sorting out and studying German folk literature have effectively promoted the development of German national literature and promoted the position of German literature in world literature. Grimm's fairy tales were born in such an era atmosphere and social environment.

2. Andersen's Fairy Tales: In Andersen's time, Denmark was still a monarchical society, and social life was rarely touched since the Middle Ages.

After entering the19th century, a series of major historical changes have taken place, such as the waste of national strength caused by the Napoleonic Wars, the failure on the Norwegian issue, the economic recession in the 1920s, the king's status changing from a royalist system to a dictatorship, and the prudence and compromise of the middle class, all of which made the society basically in a state of political oppression and cultural ignorance.

In Andersen's works, we also feel the gray and depression of this era everywhere. Andersen created the modern expression of fairy tales, and he used the "children" perspective of fairy tales to see through the complex life of modern people. Andersen made fairy tales surpass the legendary imagination of folk literature and become a distinctive personal writing and modern skill exploration.