Happy 210th Hans Christian Andersen!
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Hans Christian Andersen was born on April 2nd 1805 into modest circumstances. He was the only child of a cobbler who died shortly after Hans's 11th birthday. His mother was an uneducated washerwoman. Nevertheless both paren'ts influenced him profoundly.
His father was once given some red silk by a wealthy woman to make a pair of dancing shoes. When he presented the finished pair to her she remarked that all he had managed to do was ruin her silk. Hans's father replied that it was then only fair that he should destroy his leather too and cut them up before her eyes. Somehow this inspired the tale The Red Shoes. Indeed, feet and footwear come up again in The Galoshes of Fortune and The Girl who Trod on a Loaf.
Image: hans-christian-andersens.blogspot.ca/
His mother was quite superstitious and probably informed his remarkable sense of the fantastic and horrific that is present in so many of his tales.
Young Hans tried a number of career paths including work as a weaver's apprentice, tailor (as a child he made clothes for his dolls), actor and dancer. He had been abusively discouraged from writing in school but persisted and enjoyed success as a poet, travel writer, novelist and famously, as a writer of fairy tales. At one point in his life he even applied to the Royal Library but was turned down on the grounds that he was too talented!
If you are interested in reading up on Hans Christian Andersen's life or works, here is a select list:
The Ugly Duckling by Rachel Isadora
Hans Christian Andersen: His Fairy Tale Life by Hjordis Varmar
Hans Christian Andersen's work is all available in the public domain! You can download it from Project Gutenburg via Overdrive!
Source (adult book)
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