Who wrote the original cinderella story?

The theme of cinderella, oppression and triumphant reward goes back millenia, however the original author of the story we know today was Charles Perrault. He wrote a rather gruesome tale involving the evil stepsisters cutting off their toes to fit their feet in the glass slipper. Perraults version also had birds who were friends of Cinderella instead of a fairy godmother.

The Brother's Grimm updated it to the less gross story used by Walt Disney.

Alexadata has it backwords, not to mention there is no real way to tell exactly where the story originated. "Cinderella" Has been told in some veriation sense the 1st century. The fairy godmother in the story has changed in many ways throut culture and time. She has been a fish, a crab, a tree on cinderella's mother's grave.... and to many more to mention. The grimm brothers are notorious for the grusome versions of many fairy tales, where as Charles Perrault's versions of tales are where disney got most of their preliminary ideas. There is also a lot of controversy whether the famed "glass slipper" was actually glass. It is believed by many to have been fur in earlier versions.

It just one of those stories which have been told for centuries, in different countries, with all kinds of variations, or all the different stories existed and someone combined things from all of them to create the story which today we know as cinderella...one of my favorites is Fenist the Bright Falcon which is a Russian folk tale, in which you have the two wicked, vain, materialistic sisters and the "maid" who cleans the house and is humble...you also have a "fairy god mother" character who is also the "prince," Fenist the Bright Falcon. He gives her a feather which she just has to wave for her carriage with 6 horses (sound familiar?) and beautiful gown to appear for her to go to church, etc. It's really quite similar.