Hans Christian Andersen

The future author of the classic stories “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “The Red Shoes,” Hans Christian Andersen was born on April 2, 1805, into humble circumstances in the Danish city of Odense. His father, Hans Andersen, was an impoverished cobbler who had taught himself to read and write; his mother, illiterate and superstitious, worked as a washerwoman and died an alcoholic. From an early age, Hans shared his father’s love of the theater. When Hans was a boy, he and his father built a puppet theater, where Hans would enact dramas of his own invention. Desperate for money, in 1812 Hans Andersen Sr. was paid to take another man’s place in the army of Denmark, allied with the French in the Napoleonic Wars. When he returned home, he was sick and suffering from an illness that would prove fatal in 1816. Before his mother remarried, young Hans worked in a factory, but the family’s economic woes continued.

In 1819 Hans—fourteen years old and with little education, but endowed with a remarkable singing voice and a gift for performance—left Odense to seek his fortune in Copenhagen as a singer, dancer, or actor. Through his talents and ambition, as well as a certain audacity, he attracted wealthy patrons who arranged singing lessons and a small stipend for him. In 1820 he joined the choir of the Royal Theater, one of whose directors, Jonas Collin, had Hans sent to a private school in Slagelse, 50 miles from Copenhagen. When he returned to the city in 1827, he maintained his relationship with Collin, became a frequent dinner guest at the homes of the city’s elite, and blossomed as a writer. His first poem, “The Dying Child,” appeared in 1827, and two years later he published a travel sketch in the style of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, who had a great influence on him.

In 1833 and 1834 Andersen visited France, Switzerland, and Italy, where he set his first successful novel, The Improvisatore(1835). He began writing fairy tales in the folk tradition and published them as Fairy Tales Told for Children( 1835) , a volume that included “The Princess on the Pea” and “Little Claus and Big Claus.” The same year he produced a second installment of stories including “Thumbelina.” Thereafter, for the rest of his life he published a new volume of tales every year or two. Among the best known are “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Nightingale,” and “The Little Match Girl.” He also published several travelogues, dozens of plays, six novels, and three autobiographies.

For inspiration, Andersen drew on the people he knew as well as on traditional folk tales. His unique style—his inventive, entertaining stories appeal to children and adults alike—at—tracted many admirers, including the Danish king, who, when Andersen was a young man, granted him a royal annuity. Andersen was an international celebrity, and the royalties from his books made him wealthy. An avid traveler, he made frequent sojourns throughout Europe, most frequently to the cultured city of Weimar, Germany. Hans Christian Andersen died on August 4, 1875, in Copenhagen.