Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen (/ˈændərsən/ AN-dər-sən, Danish: [ˈhænˀs ˈkʰʁestjæn ˈɑnɐsn̩] (listen); 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.

Andersen’s fairy tales, consisting of 156 stories across nine volumes[1] and translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West’s collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. His most famous fairy tales include “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “The Little Mermaid”, “The Nightingale”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, “The Red Shoes”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Match Girl”, and “Thumbelina”. His stories have inspired ballets, plays, and animated and live-action films.

Andersen’s childhood home in Odense
Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark on 2 April 1805. He had a stepsister named Karen.[5] His father, also named Hans, considered himself related to nobility (his paternal grandmother had told his father that their family had belonged to a higher social class,[6] but investigations have disproved these stories).[6][7] Although it has been challenged,[6] a persistent speculation suggests that Andersen was an illegitimate son of King Christian VIII. Danish historian Jens Jørgensen supported this idea in his book H.C. Andersen, en sand myte [a true myth].

Hans Christian Andersen was baptised on 15 April 1805 in Saint Hans Church (St John’s Church) in Odense, Denmark. His certificate of birth was not drafted until November 1823, according to which six Godparents were present at the baptising ceremony: Madam Sille Marie Breineberg, Maiden Friederiche Pommer, shoemaker Peder Waltersdorff, journeyman carpenter Anders Jørgensen, hospital porter Nicolas Gomard, and royal hatter Jens Henrichsen Dorch.

Andersen’s father, who had received an elementary school education, introduced his son to literature, reading to him the Arabian Nights.[9] Andersen’s mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter, was an illiterate washerwoman. Following her husband’s death in 1816, she remarried in 1818. Andersen was sent to a local school for poor children where he received a basic education and had to support himself, working as an apprentice to a weaver and, later, to a tailor. At fourteen, he moved to Copenhagen to seek employment as an actor. Having an excellent soprano voice, he was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre, but his voice soon changed. A colleague at the theatre told him that he considered Andersen a poet. Taking the suggestion seriously, Andersen began to focus on writing.

Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Danish Theatre, held great affection for Andersen and sent him to a grammar school in Slagelse, persuading King Frederick VI to pay part of the youth’s education. Andersen had by then published his first story, “The Ghost at Palnatoke’s Grave” (1822). Though not a stellar pupil, he also attended school at Elsinore until 1827.

He later said that his years at this school were the darkest and most bitter years of his life. At one particular school, he lived at his schoolmaster’s home. There he was abused and was told that it was done in order “to improve his character”. He later said that the faculty had discouraged him from writing, which then resulted in a depression.

Early work
It doesn’t matter about being born in a duckyard, as long as you are hatched from a swan’s egg

“The Ugly Duckling”
A very early fairy tale by Andersen, “The Tallow Candle” (Danish: Tællelyset), was discovered in a Danish archive in October 2012. The story, written in the 1820s, is about a candle that did not feel appreciated. It was written while Andersen was still in school and dedicated to one of his benefactors. The story remained in that family’s possession until it turned up among other family papers in a local archive.

In 1829, Andersen enjoyed considerable success with the short story “A Journey on Foot from Holmen’s Canal to the East Point of Amager.” Its protagonist meets characters ranging from Saint Peter to a talking cat. Andersen followed this success with a theatrical piece, Love on St.Nicholas Church Tower, and a short volume of poems. He made little progress in writing and publishing immediately following the issue of these poems but he did receive a small travel grant from the king in 1833. This enabled him to set out on the first of many journeys throughout Europe. At Jura, near Le Locle, Switzerland, Andersen wrote the story “Agnete and the Merman”. The same year he spent an evening in the Italian seaside village of Sestri Levante, the place which inspired the title of “The Bay of Fables”. He arrived in Rome in October 1834. Andersen’s travels in Italy were reflected in his first novel, a fictionalized autobiography titled The Improvisatore (Improvisatoren), published in 1835 to instant acclaim.
Literary fairy tales

A paper chimney sweep cut by Andersen
Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. (Danish: Eventyr, fortalt for Børn. Første Samling.) is a collection of nine fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. The tales were published in a series of three installments by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark between May 1835 and April 1837, and represent Andersen’s first venture into the fairy tale genre.

The first installment of sixty-one unbound pages was published 8 May 1835 and contained “The Tinderbox”, “Little Claus and Big Claus”, “The Princess and the Pea” and “Little Ida’s Flowers”. The first three tales were based on folktales Andersen had heard in his childhood while the last tale was completely Andersen’s creation and created for Ida Thiele, the daughter of Andersen’s early benefactor, the folklorist Just Mathias Thiele. Reitzel paid Andersen thirty rixdollars for the manuscript, and the booklet was priced at twenty-four shillings.

The second booklet was published on 16 December 1835 and contained “Thumbelina”, “The Naughty Boy” and “The Traveling Companion”. “Thumbelina” was completely Andersen’s creation although inspired by “Tom Thumb” and other stories of miniature people. “The Naughty Boy” was based on a poem by Anacreon about Cupid, and “The Traveling Companion” was a ghost story Andersen had experimented with in the year 1830.

The third booklet contained “The Little Mermaid” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, and it was published on 7 April 1837. “The Little Mermaid” was completely Andersen’s creation though influenced by De la Motte Fouqué’s “Undine” (1811) and the lore about mermaids. This tale established Andersen’s international reputation. The only other tale in the third booklet was “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which was based on a medieval Spanish story with Arab and Jewish sources. On the eve of the third installment’s publication, Andersen revised the conclusion of his story, (the Emperor simply walks in procession) to its now-familiar finale of a child calling out, “The Emperor is not wearing any clothes!”

Danish reviews of the first two booklets first appeared in 1836 and were not enthusiastic. The critics disliked the chatty, informal style and immorality that flew in the face of their expectations. Children’s literature was meant to educate rather than to amuse. The critics discouraged Andersen from pursuing this type of style. Andersen believed that he was working against the critics’ preconceived notions about fairy tales, and he temporarily returned to novel-writing. The critics’ reaction was so severe that Andersen waited a full year before publishing his third installment.

The nine tales from the three booklets were combined and then published in one volume and sold at seventy-two shillings. A title page, a table of contents, and a preface by Andersen were published in this volume.

In 1868 Horace Scudder, the editor of Riverside Magazine For Young People, offered Andersen $500 for a dozen new stories. Sixteen of Andersen’s stories were published in the American magazine, and ten of them appeared there before they were printed in Denmark.

Main Stories

• Andersen’s Fairy Tales