Charles Perrault was a French author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales, offered as if they were pre-existing folk tales, include: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hop o' My Thumb), Diamonds and Toads, Patient Griselda, The Ridiculous Wishes... Perrault's most famous stories are still in print today and have been made into operas, ballets (e.g., Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty), plays, musicals, and films, both live-action and animation. The Brothers Grimm retold their own versions of some of Perrault's fairy tales.

German philologist and folklorist Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm in 1822 formulated Grimm's Law, the basis for much of modern comparative linguistics. With his brother Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859), he collected Germanic folk tales and published them as Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-1815). Indo-European stop consonants, represented in Germanic, underwent the regular changes that Grimm's Law describes; this law essentially states that Indo-European p shifted to Germanic f, t shifted to th, and k shifted to h. Indo-European b shifted to Germanic p, d shifted to t, and g shifted to k. Indo-European bh shifted to Germanic b, dh shifted to d, and gh shifted to g. This jurist and mythologist also authored the monumental German Dictionary and his Deutsche Mythologie . Adapted from Wikipedia.

Wilhelm Hauff was a German poet and novelist best known for his fairy tales. Educated at the University of Tübingen, Hauff worked as a tutor and in 1827 became editor of J.F. Cotta’s newspaper Morgenblatt. Hauff had a narrative and inventive gift and sense of form; he wrote with ease, combining narrative themes of others with his own. His work shows a pleasant, often spirited, wit. There is a strong influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann in his fantasy Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satans (1826–27; “Pronouncements from the Memoirs of Satan”). Hauff’s Lichtenstein (1826), a historical novel of 16th-century Württemberg, was one of the first imitations of Sir Walter Scott. He is also known for a number of fairy tales that were published in his Märchenalmanach auf das Jahr 1826 and had lasting popularity. Similar volumes followed in 1827 and 1828. His novellas, which were collected posthumously in Novellen, 3 vol. (1828), include Jud Süss (The Jew Suss; serialized 1827).

Hans Christian Andersen (often referred to in Scandinavia as H.C. Andersen) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories—called eventyr, or "fairy-tales" — express themes that transcend age and nationality. Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Nightingale", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.