Andersen

Andersen, Hans Christian, the celebrated Danish writer of romances and fairy tales, born at Odense in the Isle of Funen in 1805. His father, a poor cobbler, gave him but a slender education, and meant him to be a tailor. The boy, however, was resolved to go on the stage, and made his way to Copenhagen, where his good voice secured him an engagement at the Theatre Royal. This he lost when his voice broke, and he was not only rescued from destitution but was put in the way of getting an education by a benevolent official. His first book, A Journey on Foot to Amager, appeared in 1828, and for some years he was engaged in travelling. The Improvisatore, Only a Fiddler, Fantasies and Delights, a collection of poems, and The Mulatto, a drama, followed at short intervals. The imaginative works, for which he is best known in England, began with a series containing the Ugly Duckling, in 1888, and his masterpiece, A Picture Book without Pictures, was published in 1840. Many of these quaint, simple, touching little fables have won a world-wide fame. The royal family of Denmark honoured him with their esteem and friendship, but literary jealousies made him spend much of his life abroad. In Sweden and In Spain are records of travel at this period. His own story is charmingly told in The Romance of my Life. Returning to Copenhagen he saw his seventieth birthday kept as a national festival, and died soon afterwards, in 1870.