Who is Hans Christian Andersen?
Posted by kathavarta on June 27, 2008
Hans Christian Andersen in Danish, or simply H.C. Andersen; (April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his more than 150 fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling. During Andersen’s lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed for having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into over 150 languages and continue to be published in “millions of copies all over the world.
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.
Anderson was born and grew up in Odense, in Denmark. His father was a poor shoemaker who, despite the lack of a formal education, loved literature. He would read aloud from The Arabian Nights and La Fontaine to the young Hans, inculcating in him a love for such tales. He also introduced him to the works of Danish dramatists, and fostered in him a love for the theatre and the stage.
Anderson was eleven years old when his father died. To help his mother support the family, he had to leave school and find work in the local factories. However, he had a good singing voice, and soon managed to obtain small parts in the local theatre. He wished to make a career for himself on the stage, and, unwilling to learn a more practical trade, he decided to take all his savings and move to Copenhagen. He was fourteen years old at this time.
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.
He knew no one in Copenhagen, but managed to find his way into the house of the director of the Royal Theatre and impress him and his dinner guests enough for them to raise a subscription to support him while he was taught music. He also managed small parts at the Royal theatre. Three years later his voice broke, and he could no longer work.
This time help came in the form of Jonas Collin, the governor of the Royal Theatre. Collin secured Anderson a grant to study at a state grammar school; but Anderson hated it there. At the age of 17, he was put into a class of 12-year olds; he was bullied and ridiculed, and had finally to go to a private tutor. He passed the university matriculation exams at the age of 23. He now openly chose writing as his career.
The entire Collin family became his lifelong friends. Jonas’ son, Edvard, eventually took charge of publishing Andersen’s work.
Though Anderson never married, he fell in love several times during the course of his long life. He modelled many of the characters in his fairytales on the women he had loved.
His first novel The Improvisatore was published in 1835. It was quickly translated into German, and made his reputation.
He published his Eventyr Fortalte for Born or Tales Told for Children – later in the same year. This, a small, cheap booklet containing four small tales, was in complete contrast to his novel. The word ‘eventyr’ is generally translated as ‘fairytale’ but is in fact related to ‘adventure’ and has the sense of a short fantastic story for any age of reader. Three of the stories in this collection were based on folktales: The Tinderbox, Big Claus and Little Claus, and The Princess on the Pea. The fourth, Little Ida’s Flowers, was Anderson’s own.
Anderson wrote these stories ‘exactly as I would tell them to a child’. But critics complained of his rough colloquial style, and at the lack of lessons to be learnt from these tales, given that they were meant for children. But Anderson continuing writing his stories, and by the end of ten years was recognized as a master of this form of story.
All of Andersen’s tales – whether based on folk themes or of his own invention – had a personal touch to them: ‘Most of what I have written is a reflection of myself. Every character is from life.’
Andersen continued to write and to travel, meeting many well-known writers along the way. In Berlin he met the brothers Grimm; and in 1847, in England, he met and became friends with Charles Dickens, a friendship that remained close till 1857 when Andersen overstayed his welcome at the Dickens’s house: he had been invited for two weeks, and stayed for five. Dickens stuck a card on the mirror of the spare room which said, ‘Han Andersen slept in this room for five weeks – which to the family seemed AGES!’.
Andersen published his autobiography, The Fairy Tale of My Life, in 1855.
His last fairy tales were published in 1872, and the second collected edition of 152 fairy tales and longer stories appeared in 1874.
He died in 1875, at the age of seventy, of liver cancer.
Selections of Anderson’s stories first appeared in English in 1846.
