HANS

CHRISTIAN

See also:

• HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805-1875)

ANDERSEN (1805-1875)  , Danish poet and fabulist, was born at Odense, in Funen, on the and of April 1805 . He was the son of a sickly young shoemaker of twenty-two, and his still younger wife: the whole family lived and slept in one little room . Andersen very early showed signs of imaginative temperament, which was fostered by the indulgence and superstition of his parents . In 1816 the shoe-maker died and the child was left entirely to his own devices . He ceased to go to school; he built himself a little toy-theatre and sat at home making clothes for his puppets, and reading all the plays that he could borrow; among them were those of Holberg and Shakespeare . At Easter 1819 he was confirmed at the church of St Kund, Odense, and began to turn his thoughts to the future . It was thought that he was best fitted to be a tailor; but as nothing was settled, and as Andersen wished to be an opera-singer, he took matters into his own hand and started for Copenhagen in September 1819 . There he was taken for a lunatic, snubbed at the theatres, and nearly reduced to starvation, but he was befriended by the musicians Christoph Weyse and Siboni, and afterwards by the poet Frederik Hoegh Guldberg (1771-1852) . His voice failed, but he was admitted as a dancing pupil at the Royal Theatre . He grew idle, and lost the favour of Guldberg, but a new patron appeared in the person of Jonas Collin, the director of the Royal Theatre, who became Andersen's life-long friend . King Frederick VI. was interested in the strange boy and sent him for some years, free of charge, to the great grammar-school at Slagelse . Before he started for school he published his first volume, The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave (1822) .

Andersen, a very backward and unwilling pupil, actually remained at Slagelse and at another school in

Elsinore until 1827; these years, he says, were the darkest and bitterest in his life . Collin at length consented to consider him educated, and Andersen came to Copenhagen . In 1829 he made a considerable success with a fantastic volume entitled A Journey on Foot from Holman's Canal to the East Point of Amager, and he published in the same season a farce and a book of poems . He thus suddenly came into request at the moment when his friends had decided that no good thing would ever come out of his early eccentricity and vivacity . He made little further progress, however, until 1833, when he received a small travel-ling stipend from the king, and made the first of his long European journeys . At Le Locle, in the Jura, he wrote Agnate and the Merman; and in October 1834 he arrived in Rome . Early in 1835 Andersen's novel, The Improvisatore, appeared, and achieved a real success; the poet's troubles were at an end at last . In the same year, 1835, the earliest instalment of Andersen's immortal Fairy Tales (Eventyr) was published in Copenhagen . Other parts, completing the first volume, appeared in 1836 and 1837 . The value of these stories was not at first perceived, and they sold slowly . Andersen was more successful for the time being with a novel, O.T., and a volume of sketches, In Sweden; in 1837 he produced the best of his romances, Only a Fiddler . He now turned his attention, with but ephemeral success, to the theatre, but was recalled to his true genius in the charming miscellanies of 1840 and 1842, the Picture-Book without Pictures, and A Poet's Bazaar .

Meanwhile the fame of his Fairy Tales had been steadily rising; a second

series began in 1838, a third in 1845 . Andersen was now celebrated throughout Europe, although in Denmark itself there was still some resistance to his pretensions . In June 1847 he paid his first visit to England, and enjoyed a triumphal social success; when he left, Charles Dickens saw him off from . Ramsgate pier . After this Andersen continued to publish much; he still desired to excel as a novelist and a dramatist, which he could not do, and he still disdained the enchanting Fairy Tales, in the composition of which his unique genius lay . Nevertheless he continued to write them, and in 1847 and 1848 two fresh volumes appeared . After a long silence Andersen published in 18J7 another romance, To be or not to be . In 1863, after a very interesting journey, he issued one of the best of his travel-books, In Spain . His Fairy Tales continued to appear, in instalments, until 1872, when, at Christmas, the last stories were published . In the spring of that year Andersen had an awkward accident, falling out of bed and severely hurting himself . He was never again quite well, but he lived till the 4th of August 1875, when he died very peacefully in the house called Rolighed, near Copenhagen . (E .