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Hans Christian Andersen or simply H.C. Andersen , (April 2, 1805 –
August 4, 1875) was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales.
Among his best-known stories are "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The
Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling". During Anderson's lifetime he was
feted by Royalty and acclaimed as having brought joy to children across Europe. His
fairy tales have been translated into well over a hundred languages and continue to
be published in "millions of copies all over the world".
 Childhood
Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on Tuesday, April 2, 1805.
Most English (as well as German and French) sources use the name "Hans Christian
Andersen", but in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia he is usually referred to as
merely "H. C. Andersen." His name "Hans Christian" is a traditional Danish name and
is used as a single name, though originally a combination of two individual names.
It is incorrect to use only one of the two parts. It is an accepted custom in
Denmark to use only the initials in this and a few other names.
Andersen's father apparently believed that he might be related to nobility, and
according to scholars at the Hans Christian Andersen Center, his paternal
grandmother told him that the family had once been in a higher social class.
However, investigation proves these stories unfounded. The family apparently did
have some connections to Danish royalty, but these were work-related. Nevertheless,
the theory that Andersen was the illegitimate son of royalty persists in Denmark,
bolstered by the fact that the Danish King took a personal interest in Andersen as
a youth and paid for his education. The writer Rolf Dorset insists that not all
options have been explored in determining Andersen's heritage.
Andersen displayed great intelligence and imagination as a young boy, a trait
fostered by the indulgence of his parents and by the superstition of his mother. He
made himself a small toy-theatre and sat at home making clothes for his puppets,
and reading all the plays that he could lay his hands upon; among them were those
of Ludvig Holberg and William Shakespeare. Throughout his childhood, he had a
passionate love for literature. He was known to memorize entire plays by
Shakespeare and to recite them using his wooden dolls as actors. He was also a
great lover of the art of banter, and assisted in initiating a society of like
minded banterers amongst his friends.
Youth
In 1816, his father died and, in order to support himself, Andersen worked as an
apprentice for both a weaver and a tailor. He later worked in a cigarette factory
where his fellow workers humiliated him by betting on whether he was in fact a
girl, pulling down his trousers to check. At the age of fourteen, Andersen moved to
Copenhagen seeking employment as an actor in the theatre. He had a pleasant soprano
voice and succeeded in being admitted to the Royal Danish Theatre. This career
stopped short when his voice broke. A colleague at the theatre had referred to him
as a poet, and Andersen took this very seriously and began to focus on writing.
Hans Christian Andersen in 1869, following an accidental meeting, Jonas Collin
started taking an interest in the odd boy and sent Andersen to the grammar school
in Slagelse, paying all his expenses. Before even being admitted to grammar-school,
Andersen had already succeeded in publishing his first story, The Ghost at
Palnatoke's Grave in (1822). Though an unwilling pupil, Andersen studied both in
Slagelse and at a school in Elsinore until 1827. He later stated that these years
had been the darkest and most bitter parts of his life. He had experienced living
in his schoolmaster's own home, being abused in order to "build his character", and
he had been alienated from his fellow students, being much older than most of them,
homely and unattractive. Furthermore, he was dyslexic, a very likely reason for his
learning difficulties and he later said that the school faculty forbade or
discouraged him to write. He would later learn to speak near fluent English, Dutch,
and German, as well as the Scandanavian languages.
Career
Early
works
In 1829, Andersen enjoyed a considerable success with a short story entitled "A
Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager." During the same
season, he published both a farce and a collection of poems. He had little further
progress, however, until 1833 when he received a small traveling grant from the
King, making the first of his long European journeys. At Le Locle, in the Jura, he
wrote "Agnete and the Merman"; and in October 1834 he arrived in Rome. Andersen's
first novel, The Improvisatore, was published in the beginning of 1835, and became
an instant success.
Anderson's
Fairy Tales
It was during 1835 that Anderson published the first installment of his immortal
Fairy Tales (Danish: Eventyr). More stories, completing the first volume, were
published in 1836 and 1837. The quality of these stories was not immediately
recognised, and they sold poorly. At the same time, Andersen enjoyed more success
with two novels: O.T. (1836) and Only a Fiddler (1837).
After a visit to Sweden in 1837, Andersen became inspired by Scandinavism and
committed himself to writing a poem to convey his feeling of relatedness between
the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians. It was in July 1839 during a visit to the
island of Funen that Andersen first wrote the text of his poem Jeg er en Skandinav
(I am a Scandinavian). Andersen designed the poem to capture "the beauty of the
Nordic spirit, the way the three sister nations have gradually grown together" as
part of a Scandinavian national anthem. Composer Otto Lindblad set the poem to
music and the composition was published in January 1840. Its popularity peaked in
1845, after which it was seldom sung.
Travelogues
In 1851, he published to wide acclaim In Sweden, a volume of travel sketches. A
keen traveller, Andersen published several other long travelogues: Shadow Pictures
of a Journey to the Harz, Swiss Saxony, etc. etc. in the Summer of 1831 (1831), A
Poet's Bazaar (1842), In Spain (1863), and A Visit to Portugal in 1866 (1868). The
latter describes his visit with his Portuguese friends Jorge and Jose O'Neill, who
were his fellows in the mid 1820s while living in Copenhagen. In his travelogues,
Andersen took heed of some of the contemporary conventions about travel writing;
but always developed the genre to suit his own purposes. Each of his travelogues
combines documentary and descriptive accounts of the sights he saw with more
philosophical excurses on topics such as being an author, immortality, and the
nature of fiction in the literary travel report. Some of the travelogues, such as
In Sweden, even contain fairy-tales.
In the 1840s Andersen's attention returned to the stage, however with no great
success. His true genius was however proved in the miscellany the Picture-Book
without Pictures (1840). The fame of his Fairy Tales had grown steadily; a second
series began in 1838 and a third in 1845. Andersen was now celebrated throughout
Europe, although his native Denmark still showed some resistance to his
pretensions.
Meetings with
Dickens
In June 1847, Anderson paid his first visit to England and enjoyed a triumphal
social success during the summer. Countess of Blessington invited him to her
parties where intellectual and famous people could meet, and it was at one party
that he met Charles Dickens for the first time. They shook hands and walked to the
veranda which was of much joy to Andersen. He wrote in his diary "We had come to
the veranda, I was so happy to see and speak to England's now living writer, whom I
love the most."
Ten years later, Andersen visited England, primarily to visit Dickens. He stayed at
Dickens' home for five weeks, oblivious to Dickens' increasingly blatant hints for
him to leave. Dickens' daughter said of Andersen, "He was a bony bore, and stayed
on and on." Shortly after Andersen left, Dickens published David Copperfield,
featuring the obsequious Uriah Heep, who is said to have been modeled on Andersen.
Andersen quite enjoyed the visit, and never understood why Dickens stopped
answering his letters.
Later
works
Andersen continued to publish many works, still hoping to excel as both novelist
and dramatist, but was unsuccessful in the attempt. He disdained the enchanting
Fairy Tales, the composition of which had proved his unique genius. He did,
however, continue to write them, and two more collections appeared in 1847 and
1848. After a long silence, Andersen published a new novel To Be Or Not to Be in
1857. He continued publishing his Fairy Tales in installments, until 1872. He
published his last stories at Christmas in this year.
Death
In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell out of bed and was severely hurt. He never
quite recovered, but he lived until August 4, 1875, dying peacefully in a house
called Rolighed (literally: calmness), near Copenhagen, which was given to him by
his friend Moritz Melchior, a banker. Shortly before his death, he had consulted a
composer about the music for his funeral, saying: "Most of the people who will walk
after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps." His body
was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen. At the
time of his death, he was an internationally renowned and treasured artist. He
received a stipend from the Danish Government as a "national treasure". Before his
death, steps were already underway to erect the large statue inn his honour which
was completed and is prominently placed in Copenhagen.
The critic Georg Brandes had questioned Anderson about whether he would write his
autobiography. He claimed that it had already been written- "The Ugly
Duckling".
Fairy
tales
Some of his most famous fairy tales include:
The Angel
The Bell
The Emperor's New Clothes
The Fir Tree
The Happy Family
It's Quite True!
The Little Match Girl
The Little Mermaid
Little Tuk
The Nightingale
The Old House
Ole-Lukøie
The Princess and the Pea (also known as The Real Princess)
The Red Shoes
The Shadow
The Snow Queen
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
The Story of a Mother
The Swineherd
Thumbelina
The Tinder Box
The Ugly Duckling
The Wild Swans
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Hans Christian
Anderson - Projector - Biography
