The Brothers Grimm were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German professors who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales. They are probably the best known story tellers of novellas from Europe, allowing the widespread knowledge of such tales as Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. The Brothers Grimm began collecting folk tales around 1807. By 1810 the Grimms produced a manuscript collection of several dozen tales, which they had recorded by inviting storytellers to their home and transcribing what they heard. Although it is often believed that they took their tales from peasants, many of their informants were middle-class or aristocratic, recounting tales they had heard from their servants, and several of the informants were of Huguenot ancestry and told tales French in origin.