Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen (Odense, 1805 – Copenhagen, 1875) was a Danish writer, poet, playwright and author of travelogues, associated with Romanticism. He wrote in Danish, the language of a small kingdom, yet his fairy tales reached readers across the world. He is remembered today above all as the creator of the modern literary fairy tale for children, although in his own time he was also a tireless traveller and a writer of novels and plays.

He was born into a poor family in Odense. His father, a shoemaker, introduced him to literature by reading him the Arabian Nights, and the boy grew up with a vivid imagination that his parents encouraged. After his father died in 1816, he left school and read everything he could get hold of, among others Ludwig Holberg and Shakespeare. At fourteen he went to Copenhagen hoping to succeed as an actor or singer. There he endured hardship and disappointment until he won the support of Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Theatre, who helped arrange his schooling at Slagelse and Elsinore. Andersen later described those years as the darkest and most bitter of his life, though he finished his studies and began publishing in the capital's literary press.

His career took shape around 1835, with the novel The Improvisatore, inspired by his time in Italy, and with the first series of fairy tales, issued in instalments between 1835 and 1837. Some stories drew on folk tales he had heard as a child, while others were entirely his own invention. His style is conversational: the narrator speaks directly to the reader, mixing humour with tenderness and a quiet melancholy about exclusion and vulnerability. At first Danish critics faulted this informal tone and its lack of an obvious educational purpose, but readers embraced it. Andersen travelled for roughly a decade across Europe, the Near East and the Iberian Peninsula, and these journeys produced travel books such as A Poet's Bazaar, In Sweden and In Spain, which blend reportage, description and reflection on writing.

His emotional life was turbulent. He often fell in love with women who were out of his reach, the most famous being the soprano Jenny Lind, who saw him as a brother. Critics often connect this frustration with several tales, including The Nightingale. Andersen also wrote his autobiography, The Fairy Tale of My Life, and he was recognised as an author during his lifetime, which was not always the case in his own country.

His legacy is immense. His more than two hundred stories have been translated into well over a hundred languages, and he is among the most translated authors in the world. His tales have inspired films, especially animated ones, plays and ballets. In Odense, his birthplace, a house museum preserves photographs, drawings and memorabilia of the writer, and today it is a centre for activities aimed mainly at children.