Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen ( AN-dər-sən; Danish: [ˈhænˀs ˈkʰʁestjæn ˈɑnɐsn̩, - ˈkʰʁæs-] ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish writer. A prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is also best remembered for his literary fairy tales.

Andersen's fairy tales, consisting of 156 stories across nine volumes, have been translated into more than 125 languages. They have become embedded in Western collective consciousness, accessible to children as well as presenting lessons known for their virtue. His most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Red Shoes", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Match Girl", and "Thumbelina." Andersen's stories have inspired ballets, plays, and animated and live-action films.

Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on 2 April 1805. He had a half sister named Karen. Andersen's father, also named Hans, considered himself related to nobility (his paternal grandmother had told his father that their family had belonged to a higher social class, but investigations have disproved these stories). Although it has been challenged, speculation suggests that Andersen was an illegitimate son of King Christian VIII. Danish historian Jens Jørgensen supported this idea in his book H.C. Andersen, en sand myte [a true myth].

Andersen was baptised on 15 April 1805 in Saint Hans Church in Odense. According to his birth certificate, which was not drafted until November 1823, six godparents were present at the baptism ceremony: Madam Sille Marie Breineberg, Maiden Friederiche Pommer, shoemaker Peder Waltersdorff, journeyman carpenter Anders Jørgensen, hospital porter Nicolas Gomard, and royal hatter Jens Henrichsen Dorch.

His father, who had received an elementary school education, introduced his son to literature, reading him Arabian Nights. His mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter, was an illiterate washerwoman. Following her husband's death in 1816, she remarried in 1818. Andersen was sent to a local school for poor children where he received a basic education and had to support himself, working as an apprentice to a weaver and, later, to a tailor. At 14, Andersen moved to Copenhagen to seek employment as an actor. Having a good soprano voice, he was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre, but his voice soon changed. A colleague at the theatre told Andersen that he considered him a poet, and taking the suggestion seriously, Andersen began to focus on writing.

Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Danish Theatre, held great affection for Andersen and sent him to a grammar school in Slagelse, persuading King Frederick VI to pay part of Andersen's education. Andersen had by then published his first story, "The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave" (1822). Though not a stellar pupil, Andersen also attended school at Elsinore until 1827.

Andersen later said that his years at this school were the darkest and most bitter years of his life. At one school, Andersen lived at his schoolmaster's home. There, Andersen was abused and was told that it was done in order "to improve his character." Andersen later said that the faculty had discouraged him from writing, which resulted in a depression.

A very early fairy tale by Andersen "The Tallow Candle" (Danish: Tællelyset), was discovered in a Danish archive in October 2012. The story, written in the 1820s, is about a candle that does not feel appreciated. It was written while Andersen was still in school and dedicated to one of his benefactors. The story remained in that family's possession until it was found among other family papers in a local archive.

In 1829, Andersen enjoyed considerable success with the short story "A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager." Its protagonist meets characters ranging from Saint Peter to a talking cat. Andersen followed this success with a theatrical piece, Love on St. Nicholas Church Tower, and a short volume of poems. He made little progress in writing and publishing immediately following these poems, but did receive a small travel grant from the king in 1833. This enabled Andersen to set out on the first of many journeys throughout Europe. At Jura, near Le Locle, Switzerland, Andersen wrote the story "Agnete and the Merman." The same year, he spent an evening in the Italian seaside village of Sestri Levante, which inspired the title of "The Bay of Fables." Andersen arrived in Rome in October 1834. His travels in Italy were reflected in his first novel, a fictionalized autobiography titled The Improvisatore (Improvisatoren), published in 1835 to instant acclaim.

Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection (Danish: Eventyr, fortalt for Børn. Første Samling.) is a collection of nine fairy tales by Andersen. The tales were published in a series of three installments by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen between May 1835 and April 1837. They were Andersen's first venture into the fairy tale genre.

The first installment was a volume of sixty-one unbound pages published 8 May 1835 containing "The Tinderbox", "Little Claus and Big Claus", "The Princess and the Pea" and "Little Ida's Flowers". The first three tales were based on folktales Andersen had heard in his childhood. The fourth was Andersen's creation for Ida Thiele, the daughter of folklorist Just Mathias Thiele, Andersen's early benefactor. Reitzel paid Andersen thirty rigsdalers for the manuscript, and the booklet was priced at 24 shillings.

The second booklet was published on 16 December 1835 and contained "The Naughty Boy", and "The Traveling Companion", and "Thumbelina." The lattermost was inspired by "Tom Thumb" and other stories of miniature people. "The Naughty Boy" was based on a poem about Eros from the Anacreontea, and "The Traveling Companion" was a ghost story Andersen had experimented with in the year 1830.

The third booklet contained "The Little Mermaid" and "The Emperor's New Clothes", and it was published on 7 April 1837. The former was influenced by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine (1811) and legends about mermaids. This tale established Andersen's international reputation. The only other tale in the third booklet was "The Emperor's New Clothes", which was based on a medieval Spanish story with Arab and Jewish origins. On the eve of the third installment's publication, Andersen revised the conclusion (in which the Emperor simply walks in procession) to its now-famous finale of a child calling out, "The Emperor is not wearing any clothes!"

In the 1840s, Andersen's attention returned to the theatre stage, but with little success. He had better luck with the publication of the Picture-Book without Pictures (1840). Andersen started a second series of fairy tales in 1838 and a third series in 1845. At this point, he was celebrated throughout Europe, although Andersen's native Denmark still showed some resistance to his pretensions.

In 1851, Andersen published In Sweden, a volume of travel sketches. The publication received wide acclaim. A keen traveler, he published several other long travelogues: Shadow Pictures of a Journey to the Harz, Swiss Saxony, etc. etc. in the Summer of 1831, A Poet's Bazaar, In Spain, and A Visit to Portugal in 1866. (The last one describes his visit with his Portuguese friends Jorge and José O'Neill, whom Andersen knew in the mid-1820s while he was living in Copenhagen.) In his travelogues, Andersen used contemporary conventions related to travel writing but developed the style to make it his own. Each of Andersen's travelogues combines documentary and descriptive accounts of his experiences, adding additional philosophical passages on topics such as authorship, immortality, and fiction in literary travel reports. Some of the travelogues, such as In Sweden, contain fairy tales.

Between 1845 and 1864, Andersen lived at Nyhavn 67, Copenhagen, where a memorial plaque is now placed.

Patrons of Andersen's writings included the monarchy of Denmark, the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. An unexpected invitation from King Christian IX to the royal palace entrenched Andersen's folklore in Danish royalty as well as making its way to the Romanov dynasty when Christian IX's daughter Maria Feodorovna married Alexander III of Russia.

In June 1847, Andersen visited England for the first time, enjoying triumphant social success. The Countess of Blessington invited him to her parties where many intellectuals would meet, and at one such party he met Charles Dickens for the first time. They shook hands and walked to the veranda, which Andersen noted in his diary: "We were on the veranda, and I was so happy to see and speak to England's now-living writer whom I do love the most." The two authors respected each other's work and each other as writers, and had in common their depictions of the underclass, who often led difficult lives affected both by the Industrial Revolution and by abject poverty.

In 1857, Andersen visited England again, primarily to meet Dickens. Andersen extended the planned brief visit to Dickens' home at Gads Hill Place into a five-week stay, much to the distress of Dickens' family. After Andersen was told to leave, Dickens gradually stopped all correspondence between them, to Andersen's great disappointment and confusion; he had enjoyed the visit and never understood why his letters went unanswered. It has been argued that Dickens modelled the physical appearance and mannerisms of Uriah Heep from David Copperfield after Andersen.

In Andersen's early life, his private journal records his refusal to have sexual relations.

Andersen experienced homosexual attraction; he wrote to Edvard Collin: "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench ... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Collin wrote in his own memoir, "I found myself unable to respond to this love, and this caused the author much suffering." Andersen's infatuation with Karl Alexander, the young hereditary duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, did result in a relationship:

In early 1872, at the age of 67, Andersen fell out of his bed and was severely hurt; he never fully recovered from the resultant injuries. Soon afterward, he started to show signs of liver cancer.

He died on 4 August 1875 at the age of 70 in a country house called Rolighed (literally: calmness) near Copenhagen, the home of his close friends, the banker Moritz G. Melchior and his wife. Shortly before his death, he 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, in the Collin family plot. In 1914, the headstone was moved to another cemetery (today known as "Frederiksbergs ældre kirkegaard"), where younger Collin family members were buried. For a period, his, Edvard Collin's, and Henriette Collin's graves were unmarked. A second stone has been erected, marking Andersen's grave, now without any mention of the Collin couple, but all three still share the same plot.

At the time of his death, Andersen was internationally revered, and the Danish government paid him an annual stipend for being a "national treasure."

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum or H.C. Andersens Hus, is a set of museums/buildings dedicated to Hans Christian Andersen in Odense, Denmark, some of which, at various times in history, have functioned as the main Odense-based museum for the author.

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Solvang, California, a city founded by Danes, is devoted to presenting the author's life and works. Displays include models of Andersen's childhood home and of "The Princess and the Pea". The museum also contains hundreds of volumes of Andersen's works, including many illustrated first editions and correspondence with Danish composer Asger Hamerik.

The Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division was bequeathed an extensive collection of Andersen materials by the Danish-American actor Jean Hersholt.

La petite marchande d'allumettes (1928; in English: The Little Match Girl), film by Jean Renoir, based on "The Little Match Girl".

The Ugly Duckling (1931) and its 1939 remake of the same name, two animated Silly Symphonies cartoon shorts produced by Walt Disney Productions, based on The Ugly Duckling.

Andersen was played by Joachim Gottschalk in the German film The Swedish Nightingale (1941), which portrays his relationship with the singer Jenny Lind.

The Red Shoes (1948), British drama film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on "The Red Shoes".

Hans Christian Andersen (1952), an American musical film starring Danny Kaye that, though inspired by Andersen's life and literary legacy, was not meant to be historically nor biographically accurate; it begins by saying, "This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about this great spinner of fairy tales."

Andersen's stories laid the groundwork for other children's classics, such as The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A. A. Milne. The trope of inanimate objects, such as toys, coming to life (as in "Little Ida's Flowers") would later also be used by Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter.

Hans Christian Andersen (album), a 1994 album by Franciscus Henri.

The Song is a Fairytale (Sangen er et Eventyr), a song cycle based on fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, composed by Frederik Magle.

"Atonal Fairy Tale", track with music composed by Gregory Reid Davis Jr. and Smart Dad Living reading the fairy tale "The Elfin Mound" by Hans Christian Andersen.

For opera and ballet see List of The Little Mermaid Adaptations

Little Hans Andersen (1903), a children's pantomime at the Adelphi Theatre.

The Nightingale (1914), an opera by Igor Stravinsky.

Sam the Lovesick Snowman at the Center for Puppetry Arts, a contemporary puppet show by Jon Ludwig inspired by "The Snow Man".

Striking Twelve, a modern musical take on "The Little Match Girl", created and performed by GrooveLily.

Hans Christian Andersen Awards, prizes awarded annually by the International Board on Books for Young People to an author and illustrator whose complete works have made lasting contributions to children's literature.

Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, a Danish literary award established in 2010.

Andersen's fable "The Emperor's New Clothes" was inducted in 2000 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Andersen's birthday, 2 April, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

The year 2005, designated "Andersen Year" in Denmark, was the bicentenary of Andersen's birth, and his life and work were celebrated around the world.

In Denmark, a well-attended show was staged in Copenhagen's Parken Stadium during "Andersen Year" to celebrate the writer and his stories.

The annual H.C. Andersen Marathon, established in 2000, is held in Odense, Denmark.

Seated bronze (1880) by sculptor August Saabye (1823–1916) can be seen in the Rosenborg Castle Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Seated bronze (1896) with a swan beside, a statue by the Danish sculptor Johannes Gelert (1852–1923), at Lincoln Park, Stockton Drive near Webster Avenue, Chicago, United States.

Seated bronze (1956), a statue by sculptor Georg J. Lober (1891–1961) and designer Otto Frederick Langman, at Central Park Lake in New York City, opposite East 74th Street (GPS 40.7744306°N 73.9677972°W / 40.7744306; -73.9677972). The seated bronze of Andersen upon a granite bench was erected on the author's 150th birthday. It includes a bronze duck representing the book The Ugly Duckling.

Seated bronze (1965) was erected in Copenhagen City Hall Square (Rådhuspladsen), facing H. C. Andersens Boulevard, Copenhagen, Denmark, made by Henry Luckow-Nielsen.

Bronze bust (2004), a replica of the 1865 bust by Herman Wilhelm Bissen (1798–1868), at Observatory Hill, Millers Point, Sydney, Australia, was officially unveiled by HRH Crown Prince Frederik and HRH Crown Princess Mary of Denmark in March 2005, on Andersen's bicentenary. It was to replace the 1955 bust erected in Phillip Park, Sydney; although found missing by 1984.

H. C. Andersens Boulevard, a major road in Copenhagen formerly known as Vestre Boulevard (Western Boulevard), received its current name in 1955 to mark the 150-year anniversary of the writer's birth.

Hans Christian Andersen Airport, a small airport servicing the Danish city of Odense.

Instituto Hans Christian Andersen, a Chilean high school located in San Fernando, Colchagua Province, Chile.

Hans Christian Andersen Park, Solvang, California.

CEIP Hans Christian Andersen, a primary Education School in Malaga, Spain.

In Japan, the city of Funabashi has a children's theme park named after Andersen. Funabashi is a sister city to Odense, the city of Andersen's birth.

In China, a US$32 million theme park based on Andersen's tales and life opened in Shanghai's Yangpu district in 2017. Construction on the project began in 2005.

The flatworm Collastoma anderseni (family: Umagillidae), an endosymbiont from the intestine of the sipunculan Themiste lageniformis (lit. 'Formed like a Lagenum'), was named after Andersen.

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense has a large digital collection of Hans Christian Andersen papercuts, drawings, and portraits.