Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875)

Hans Christian Andersen is the author of many famous fairy tales.

He wrote "The Ugly Duckling," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Little Mermaid."

"Andersen's lifelong and uncompromising faith in his destiny helped him to realize his boldest dreams despite opposition."

His Life:

Hans Christian Andersen was born in the slums of Odense, Denmark. His father was a shoemaker and his mother worked as a washerwoman. Andersen received little early education, and as a child he was highly emotional, suffering all kinds of fears and humiliations because of his tallness and effeminate interests. Andersen's hysterical attacks of cramps were falsely diagnosed as epileptic fits.

In 1816 (age 11) his father died and Andersen was forced to go to work. He was apprenticed to a weaver and tailor, and he also worked at a tobacco factory. At the age of 14 Andersen moved to Copenhagen to start a career as a singer, dancer or an actor - he had a beautiful soprano voice. The following three years were full of hardships although he found supporters who paved his way to the theatre. Andersen succeeded in becoming associated with the Royal Theater, but he had to leave it when his voice began to change.

In 1822 (age 17) Jonas Collin, one of the directors of the Royal Theatre, gave Andersen a grant to enter the grammar school at Slagelse. Other pupils were much younger 11-year-olds, among whom the seventeen-year-old Andersen was definitely out of place. However, in 1828 (age 23) he gained admission to Copenhagen University, where he completed his education.

In 1829 (age 24) the Royal Theatre produced Anderson's musical drama Love in St. Nicholas' Church Tower. In succeeding years he also wrote impressionistic prose arabesques, plays, and novels. He traveled widely in Europe, and remained a passionate traveler all his life. In 1831 (age 26) the first of his many travel sketches was published. During his journeys Andersen met among others Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, Balzac and Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens.

After trying his hand at many literary forms, he began to publish his fairy tales in 1835 (age 30). They came out in small volumes until his death. It was only in these that his genius found its true expression.

Andersen never surpassed these fairy tales with their subtle narrative style. Behind the straightforward meaning easily understood by children, there are deeper ones meant for adults.

And, it was to this naive and direct approach that he owed his world fame: anyone anywhere could, and can, understand him.

Andersen wrote and rewrote his memoirs, The Fairy Tale of My Life, but the 1855 edition is generally considered the standard one. Before he died his great dream came true when Odense, the town of his birth, was illuminated in his honor. Andersen died in his home in Rolighed on August 4, 1875.

He is one of the world's best known and most translated authors. Several editions of his fairy tales as well as cinematic versions serve to keep his memory alive.

His Fairy Tales:

Andersen's fame today rests on his Fairy Tales and Stories, written between 1835 and 1872.

The third volume of his tales, published in 1837, contained "The Little Mermaid" and "The Emperor's New Clothes". Among Andersen's other best known fairy tales are "The Ugly Duckling", "The Tinderbox," "The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", "The Nightingale" and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier".

In his fairy tale collections Andersen broke new ground in both style and content, and employed the idioms and constructions of spoken language in a way that was new in Danish writing. His identification with the unfortunate and outcast made his tales very compelling.

Instead of books, the list here is of famous stories. Enjoy.

"I love clothes," cries the Emperor, and he's not kidding. He doesn't care a fig for anything or anybody else--he doesn't have to, he's the Emperor.

What a spoiled pig! He's so vain and stuck-up that he's the perfect target for two sly swindlers, who weave him a suit of clothes no one will ever forget--especially not the Emperor! Because, you see, they just weren't there.

Since this is such a popular story, here is one retelling:

The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the Sea King, her grandmother, and her 5 older sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she may swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and human beings.

When the Little Mermaid turns 15 she ventures to the surface. She sees a ship with a beautiful prince, and falls in love with him. There comes a great storm, and the prince almost drowns, but the Little Mermaid saves him and she delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until he is found by a young girl from the temple. But the prince never sees the Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. She is told that no, humans have an ever shorter lifespan than mermaids. Mermaids live for 300 years, but when they die they turn to foam and cease to exist. Humans, on the other hand, have a short lifespan on earth, but they have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven even after they die. The Little Mermaid spends her days longing for the prince and for an eternal soul. At last she goes to the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue, because the Little Mermaid has the prettiest voice in the world. But drinking the potion will feel like a sword being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. And she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die broken-hearted and turn to foam.

The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace even though she is mute and cannot talk. Most of all he likes to see her dance and she dances for him even though it feels like dancing on knives. The prince loves her like one loves a child.

The time comes when the king decides that the prince is to marry the neighboring king's daughter. The prince tells the Little Mermaid that he will not marry the princess because he does not love her. He can only love the young girl who once saved his life, the girl who unfortunately belongs to the temple. He also tells the Little Mermaid that she is beginning to take the temple girl's place in his heart. However, it turns out that the princess is the temple girl; she had only been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.

The prince and princess are married and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up in order to be with the prince and to gain an eternal soul - her beautiful voice, her wonderful home, her loving family, her life - and of all the pain that she has suffered; all without the prince ever having a thought thereof. She despairs, but before dawn her sisters come to her and give her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife she will become a mermaid again and be able to live out her full life under the sea.

But the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and, as dawn breaks, throws herself into the sea. Here her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; She has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her that she has become like them because she, like them, strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. As a mermaid her gaining a soul was dependent on another, the prince, but as a daughter of the air she will earn her own soul by doing good deeds. When 300 years have passed she will have earned her soul and will rise into the kingdom of God. This time can be shortened for with each good child she finds she subtracts a year while she adds a day for each tear she must shed over a wicked child.

There was a prince who was looking to marry a princess. But he didn't want just any princess, he wanted to make sure she was a real princess.

One night a young girl comes to his castle claiming to be a real princess. The queen then puts a pea under twenty matresses and twenty featherbeds. If young girl is truly a princess she would not be able to sleep.

This fairy tale from Hans Christian Andersen's tells of the wonderful journey a modest little girl named Herda takes while searching for her friend Kay, who has been kidnapped by the wicked fairy, the Snow Queen.

Herda meets many obstacles in her trek before she faces a final decisive battle with the Snow Queen. But Herda's loyal heart will overcome all the adversities in this touching story of great love, human kindness and faithfulness to one's duty.

Read the original

A little boy had a set of tin soldiers that were made from a melted spoon. One soldier was missing a leg because there was not enough metal left over from the melted spoon.

Tossed aside by the boy, the one-legged soldier sees a paper cut out figure of a ballerina. She is poised on one leg and he feels an instant bond. He has found another one-legged toy and believes this to be love.

The steadfast tin soldier has a series of mishaps. He falls off the window sill into a stream. From there, he is transported to a rat infested sewer. He is swallowed by a fish and through an unlikely stroke of luck, winds up back in the boy's playroom with the other toys and the ballerina.

A gust of wind lifts the paper ballerina up and she flutters into the fire place, winding up a charred heap of ashes. Devastated, the tin soldier joins her. The remaining metal that was once the tin soldier is a charred piece of heart shaped metal.

Read the original

A poor soldier is approached by an old woman. She asks him to go into a tree and get her an old tinderbox. In the tree there are three rooms, with a chest of money and a dog. Each room he goes into, the dogs are bigger than the one before.

The soldier collects lots of money and keeps the tinderbox. He is now rich and he hears of a poor princess who is unhappy in the castle. He uses the magic tinderbox to see the princess. The princess tells her parents about the soldier and they catch the soldier. When they go to chop off his head he uses the tinderbox to call the dogs. The dogs chase the king and queen away. The soldier marries the princess and lives in a castle with her and the three dogs.

The mother duck knew from the very beginning that one of her babies would be different from the rest... the sixth egg was large and oddly shaped. When it finally hatches that summer, she thinks the "monstrous big duckling" must be a turkey chick! Other ducks are appalled by the ugly duckling, and he is chased, pecked, and kicked aside.

When he can't stand it anymore, he runs away from the pond, eventually taking refuge in the warm cottage of an old woman with a cat and a hen. Missing the delicious feeling of the water too much to stay, however, he heads out again into the wide, increasingly cold autumn world.

One day, he heard a sound of whirring wings, and up in the air he saw a flock of birds flying high. They were as bright as the snow that had fallen during the night, and their long necks were stretched southward. Oh, if only he could go with them! But what sort of companion could he be to those beautiful beings?"

At last, after a hard, cold winter--and plenty of the kind of adventures no one really wants to have--the duckling sees the same flock of birds he'd seen in the sky so many months ago. He decides he will follow them, somewhat dramatically preferring to be killed by them rather than suffer any more "cold and hunger and cruelty." Much to his surprise, they welcome him! And when he looks for his dull, awkward reflection in the water, he sees a beautiful swan instead. Children who feel ostracized, even for the tiniest of differences, may shed a few sympathetic tears for the ugly duckling. And no doubt, it was Andersen's wish to give them the hope of one day finding their own peaceful place.

Find out more about Hans Christian Andersen and His Tales at these websites:

Hans Christian Andersen
Contains a list of writings with links to many full texts of the fairy tales.

Hans Christian Andersen Museum

The Hans Christian Andersen Center
Find Research and more full text of his fairy tales and other stories.

The Little Mermaid: A Classic Fairy Tale