Hans Christian Andersen
The life of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen was like a fairy tale in many ways. Poverty, hardship, and loneliness in his youth were experiences that helped him to become one of the most honored men of his time. Many of the more than 160 fairy tales he wrote, including The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Mermaid, and The Snow Queen have become literary classics, and many have been adapted into films.
Andersen was born on April 2, 1805, in Odense, Denmark. His parents were poor; his father worked as a shoemaker and his mother was a washerwoman. His father, who died when Andersen was 11, entertained him with old Danish legends and stories from The Arabian Nights.
In 1819, Andersen moved to the capital city of Copenhagen, where he hoped to become an actor in the Royal Theater. Although many people of the theater tried to help him, he was not successful. One of the directors raised money to send him away to school, a very unhappy time in his life. He was not well treated by fellow students and schoolmasters. When word of Andersen's plight reached his benefactor in Copenhagen, he was given lessons from a private tutor. He later attended and graduated from Copenhagen University.
Andersen then spent many years traveling and writing poems, books, and plays. It was not until he was 30 that he wrote any fairy tales. His first small book of fairy tales became popular almost immediately. Andersen put many memories of his own life into his fairy tales. He never forgot that his mother as a young girl had been forced to go begging. This led him to write "The Little Match Girl," a story full of compassion for the unfortunate. His own personal experiences are reflected in "The Ugly Duckling," which points out that sometimes the qualities that make you feel lonely, different, and out of place are the very qualities that, when properly used, can make you shine.
In 1867 he returned to Odense to be honored by his country. Andersen published his last fairy tales in 1872, and after a long illness, he died in Copenhagen on August 4, 1875.5
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