Maria Tatar received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1971 and has taught at Harvard since then. Her teaching and research interests include Weimar Germany, German romanticism, folklore, children's literature, and cultural studies.

Tatar has written books on the Brothers Grimm, on fairy tales (The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales and Off with Their Heads!), and on the cultural impact of mesmerist theories and practices of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. She has also authored Lustmord, which explores the theme of sexual violence in the literature, film, and art of the Weimar period in Germany. Tatar has edited an anthology of fairy tales published as a Norton Critical Edition. She is currently at work on a book about the Bluebeard tale.