Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales (illus. by W. Heath Robinson)

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is best known for the more than 150 fairy tales he wrote during his life, which have been translated into well over 100 languages. He was born in Denmark on April 2, 1805, and his birthday is still celebrated each year as International Children's Book Day. After an early childhood marked by poverty and hard work, Andersen moved to Copenhagen when he was 14 years old and worked for a time as an actor with the Royal Danish Theatre. Fortunately for all that came after him, Andersen had to leave the theatre when his voice began to change, and he turned to writing. For the remainder of his life, he published fairy tales, plays, poems, novels, and so-called travelogues. He drew inspiration from a number of different sources, including the beauty of the natural world, stories from ancient Greece, traditional Scandanavian and German folk tales . . . and even the novels of Charles Dickens!