Historical voices
1805–1875
Denmark's great teller of literary fairy tales.
A reference author. Valice Press has no connection with Hans Christian Andersen, their publishers or their estate. Hans Christian Andersen appears here as part of the reading context around the shelf.
Biography
Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense and wrote plays, travel books, novels and poems all his life, but it is the fairy tales that made him. His 156 stories, collected in nine volumes, have been translated into more than 125 languages.
Some of the tales rework folk stories he knew from childhood; many are his own inventions. They are told to children and, at once, over their heads to the adults in the room.
Works
Timeline
1805
Born in Odense, Denmark.
1829
Had his first real success with the short story "A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager".
1835
On 8 May published the first booklet of fairy tales, and in the same year his first novel, The Improvisatore.
1837
On 7 April published the booklet with "The Little Mermaid" and "The Emperor's New Clothes".
1875
Died at the age of 70 at Rolighed, the country house near Copenhagen of his friends the Melchiors.
Why they are here
Andersen sits where folklore turns into literature: he retold tales he had heard and then made new ones that read as though they had always existed. For anyone who reads fairy mythology, he is the author who showed how far a single writer could take the form.
His tales have been adapted into ballets, plays, animated films and live-action films, and several of them — the mermaid, the match girl, the snow queen — are now part of the common stock of Western story.
Nearby on the shelf
These are Valice Press titles from the same part of the library. They are not by Hans Christian Andersen, and they are not a recommendation on Hans Christian Andersen’s behalf — only the same shelf.
A World Bestiary: 112 Legendary Creatures from 40 Traditions — Beasts, Spirits, and Guardians of World Folklore
Emre Doğan
Thirty Creation Myths from Every Corner of the Earth, Told Whole
Emre Doğan
Eighteen Trickster Tales from Eleven Traditions, and What Each One Cost
Emre Doğan
Volume One: The Vedic Gods — 5 Chapters Complete in the 1913 Text, Annotated, with a Register Grading the Author's Comparisons and a Who's-Who of 32 Figures with Verified Chapter References
Emre Doğan
Related authors
Sources
Everything on this page about Hans Christian Andersen is written from these sources, not from memory. Their dates and key claims were checked against the sources on 8 October 2026.The life dates are compared across Wikidata and the Library of Congress’s authority records.
