Joseph Jacobs was born in 1854 in Sydney, Australia. He moved to England to study at Cambridge University where he graduated with honors. He then worked as an editor, writer and translator. Supposedly, he knew 40 languages.

Jacobs became an important Jewish historian and later moved to the United States to become editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia and a Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. However, he is best known as a collector and re-teller of folk tales.

Much of Jacobs' work as a folklorist was scholarly, and many credit him with preserving English and Celtic folk tales in the way the Grimm Brothers did in Germany. But he also popularized folk tales. He rewrote them for children in a style he once described of being "as good as an old nurse will speak".