Andersen, Hans Christian

Andersen, Hans Christian, 1805–75, Danish poet, novelist, and writer of fairy tales. Reared in poverty, he left Odense at 14 for Copenhagen. He failed as an actor, but his poetry won him generous patrons including King Frederick VI. In 1829 his fantasy A Journey on Foot from the Holmen Canal to the Eastern Point of Amager was published, followed by a volume of poetry in 1830. Granted a traveling pension by the king, Andersen wrote sketches of the European countries he visited. His first novel, Improvisatoren (1835), was well received by the critics. His sentimental novels were for a time considered his forte. However, with his first book of fairy tales, Eventyr (1835), he found the medium of expression that was to immortalize his genius. He produced about one volume a year and was recognized as Denmark's greatest author and as a storyteller without peer. His tales are often tragic or gruesome in plot. His sense of fantasy, power of description, and acute sensitivity contributed to his mastery of the genre. Among his many widely beloved stories are "The Fir-Tree," "The Little Match Girl," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Red Shoes."

Bibliography

See his Fairy Tales, tr. by R. P. Keigwin (4 vol., 1956–60); his autobiography (1855, tr. 1871); A River—A Town—A Poet, autobiographical selections by A. Dreslov (1963); his diaries, translated by S. Rossel and P. Conroy; biographies by F. Böök (tr. 1962), R. Godden (1955), M. Stirling (1965), S. Toksvig (1934, repr. 1969), and E. Bredsdorff (1975).

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Andersen, Hans Christian

Hans Christian Andersen.

(credit: The Bettmann Archive)

(born April 2, 1805, Odense, near Copenhagen, Den.—died Aug. 4, 1875, Copenhagen) Danish writer of fairy tales. Though reared in poverty, he received a university education. In his many collections of tales, published 1835–72, he broke with literary tradition and employed the idioms and constructions of spoken language. His stories are imaginative combinations of universal elements from folk legend and include such favourites as “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Emperor's New Clothes.” While some reveal an optimistic belief in the ultimate triumph of goodness and beauty (e.g., “The Snow Queen”), others are deeply pessimistic. Part of what makes his tales compelling is the way they identify with the unfortunate and outcast. He also wrote plays, novels, poems, travel books, and several autobiographies.

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Andersen, Hans Christian 

Born Apr. 2, 1805, in Odense; died Aug. 4, 1875, in Copenhagen. Danish writer, son of a shoemaker.

Andersen wrote plays even in childhood. His literary experiments attracted the attention of the management of a Copenhagen theater in 1819. He published a number of poems during 1826–27. Entering school, he wrote the book A Journey on Foot From the Holmen Canal to the Eastern Point of Amager (1829). The seeds of his future tales are evident in his works Shadow Pictures (1831) and Agnete and the Merman (1834). His novels The Improvisatore (1835; Russian translation, 1844) and Only a Fiddler (1837) reflect the conflict, typical for the romantics, between the poet-dreamer and the vulgarity and heartlessness of “high society.” Between 1835 and 1837, Andersen published three collections of Stories Told for Children, which included “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and others. His best stories included “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838), “The Nightingale” (1843), “The Ugly Duckling” (1843), “The Snow Queen” (1844), “The Little Match Girl” (1845), “The Shadow” (1847), and “Mother” (1848). In A Picture Book Without Pictures (1840), Andersen revealed himself a master of the miniature short story. His play Mulatten (1840) was directed against racial inequality. His book of travel sketches A Poet’s Bazaar (1842) was the first version of his autobiography, The Story of My Life (1846; Russian translations, 1851 and 1889). In his novel Two Baronesses (vols. 1–3, 1849) Andersen gave a critical depiction of the country’s feudal past. But he gained, and was confirmed in, his place in the history of world literature as a master storyteller with a remarkable ability for combining romanticism and realism, fantasy and humor, and sometimes irony and satire. A brilliant example of this is the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which L. N. Tolstoy esteemed highly. Andersen used the weapon of laughter to strike at the world of egoism and self-interest, flattery, arrogance, and complacency.

WORKS

Eventyr og historier, vols. 1–10. Copenhagen, 1955.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–4. St. Petersburg, 1894–95.
Skazki i istorii. Moscow, 1955.

REFERENCES

Belinskii, V. G. “Improvizator . . . Roman datskogo pisatelia An-dersena . . .” Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 8. Moscow, 1955.
Pogodin, A. S. Klassik datskoi literatury Kh. K. Andersen. Moscow, 1955.
Vazhdaev, V. G. Kh. Andersen: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva.
Moscow, 1957. Murav’eva, I. Andersen, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1961.
“Kh. K. Anderson.” Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow, 1961.
Woel, C. M. H, C. Andersens liv og digtning, vols. 1–2.
Copenhagen, 1949–50. H. Chr. Andersen: Sa vie et son oeuvre. Copenhagen, 1955.

I. I. MURAV’EVA