Life

Hans Christian Andersen was born on April 2, 1805 to a washer woman and a cobbler. At the tender age of 14 he made his way from his tiny hometown of Odense, Denmark to the big city of Copenhagen to become a performer at the Royal Danish Theatre. While his dreams of performance did not come to fruition, he was able to create connections with the powerful and influential Collins family and was able to receive a classical education, including Latin, Greek, and literature. By 1829 He had published his first book and started down the road to become a great storyteller. In 1835 He published his first collection of fairy tales, changing the genre forever.  

Over his long life, he wrote over 150 fairy tales, several novels, multiple plays, hundreds of letters, and travel logs of his many journeys. He met many influential people during his life and travels including the Brothers Grimm, Kierkegaard, Victor Hugo, and Charles Dickens. Though he met and romanced many people in his life, he was a life-long bachelor and spent time in the company of other families rather than starting his own. By the time he passed away in 1875, he had received many honors and was considered a cultural ambassador for Denmark as his stories opened the door to Danish literature for mainland Europe and as far as America. Today he is called the Shakespeare of Denmark and his fairy tales still have a major impact on culture and childhood. 

The dates are all real and the people that Hans Christian Andersen met did really know him, but his life was far from as idyllic as his autobiographies would lead you to believe. For his family, his mother’s family was infamous for having children out of wedlock, his paternal grandfather was mentally ill and was locked into an asylum, and his father died when Andersen was 11. His early years in Copenhagen were steeped in poverty and he went knocking on the doors of every influential household until he was able to find someone willing to support him. The Collins family helped pay for his education and Andersen clung to them throughout the rest of his life. He published his first book against the wishes of Collins and his teachers as he had not yet graduated from school. In Denmark, his works always suffered from harsh criticism to the point that Andersen felt more welcomed in Europe than he did by the literary world of his own home country. Even his fairy tales were not well-received at first as they were considered too informal, and people found it strange that he spoke directly to readers. 

He never married but had several romantic entanglements, sending a multitude of personal, flirty, poetic letters to both women and men including a member of the Collins family, a famous opera singer, and a famous ballet dancer. For decades, scholars in Denmark wanted to preserve Andersen’s image as the “Shakespeare of Denmark”, but more modern scholars have begun to hypothesize that he may have been bisexual, asexual, or both. He loved travel, was extremely nervous, would talk as long (and occasionally longer) as people would let him, wrote constantly (both letters and stories), created beautiful paper cuttings, and left the world with an incredible collection of stories, plays, and fairy tales. Regardless of the fairy tale he spun about his life or the truth that has been uncovered, Hans Christian Andersen left a huge impact on culture and childhood, allowing a place for imagination to grow and providing a unique focus on an outsider finding their way.