Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was a cobbler’s son from Odense who went to Copenhagen at fourteen to be an actor, was sent to school by patrons, and became Denmark’s most famous writer with the fairy tales he began publishing in 1835: The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Snow Queen. Unlike the Grimms he made his up, and they are about the outsider, the mocked and the disappointed, which he was. He travelled all over Europe, stayed too long with Dickens, never married, and is read in more languages than any Dane but Kierkegaard.