Their book began as a philological project at the birth of a unified Germany. The Grimms – who also, as part of the same mission, compiled a dictionary – began to collect folk stories. These were not, as has been supposed, the tales of the masses, but stories gathered from among the bourgeoisie. The project was a matter of cultural and national record – it was not intended for children. But it was soon clear that children had become its main readers, and Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the two brothers and – in Jack Zipes's phrase – "a moral sanitation man", cleaned them up. In what was now the motherland, it wouldn't do for children to see biological mothers as jealous of their own pubescent daughters. And although he wasn't very worried about violence, Grimm was concerned about sex: by 1819 – and certainly in the last edition of 1857 – those same stories had become prudish and pious. "So now," Gaiman says, "a pregnant Rapunzel doesn't say to the witch: 'this is really weird, my belly is swelling and I don't know why' – which is how the witch knows that a prince has been visiting her. Now, she says 'you are so much lighter than the prince when you climb up my hair'. And you go: Oh! I thought you were smart but no, you're a moron."