Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller

This is a present for someone so I was hoping it would look and smell newer.

Just incase it is of help to know first, I read the paperback version, with tiny text - possibly 8pt - across 481 pages, but which includes around 60 pages of sources and bibliography.There is no doubt this is a very indepth and informative biography, with fascinating insights and an excellent range of photographs, showing Andersen's homes, friends and even some of his own creations, but the writing style, which contained alot of broken up texts and paragraphs meant it was quite a feat to work through.The book covers Andersen's entire life, and includes his many travels, diary entries, and much about his various friend / relationships and how they impacted and inspired his well known fairy tales. It was at times surprising and fascinating to discover so much about someone who's stories have endured the time and adaptations that they have.The only reason I couldn't give 5 stars is because I didn't feel it was kind, or necessary to have gone into such detail about Andersen's most personal predilections. I don't believe it would have taken anything away from the biography if omitted, and even in today's social media acceptable lack of privacy, not anything that people really needed to know.

Well written book about Hans Christen Anderson who had his ups and downs throughout his life but with his genius, managed to produce classic tales: the Little Mermaid, Snow Queen, the Tinderbox, etc.

Interesting read with insight into a complex character. Very different to the Danny Kaye version of my childhood.

The reader comes away from this work with a vivid picture of the great Danish author. From his lowly birth, son of an illiterate washerwoman, his early love of music and theatre, his shyness yet profound self-belief which prompted him to leave home to make his fortune in Copenhagen aged only 14, Wullschlager conducts us through his life.Despite his fairy tales and enjoyment of the company of children, Andersen was far from being merely the naive and child-like personality which some attributed to him. Using his diaries and accounts of those who knew him, the author shows his often depressive and difficult character, and his constant craving for approbation - "We are suffering a good deal from Andersen" wrote Charles Dickens when the latter came for a lengthy stay.Andersen's work (not just fairy tales but novels, plays, travel works, poetry, and latterly tales aimed at a more adult audience) are shaped by events in his life, and in exerpts from his writings Wullschlager points out the parallels between them.With a number of b/w photos of Andersen and important places and people in his life, this leaves the reader with a feeling that s/he knows and somewhat understands the writer. Most enjoyable and interesting.

Wullschlager's account endears Andersen to the reader as she treads a fine line between exposing his inadequacies as a man and doing justice to the legend of the great author. Since Andersen himself sought from an early age to retouch the picture of his own past, conflating fiction and reality to create a mythological figure, any biographer has to be alert to false scents. It seems to me that Wullschlager accepts the foibles of her subject more willingly than, say, Zipes, whose 2005 `Hans Christian Andersen, The Misunderstood Storyteller' is harder on Andersen and more dogmatic about his hang-ups. Wullschlager's account convinces because she allows the genius of her subject to stand unmolested: a rare and naïve sensitivity who somehow managed to concoct timeless tales of princesses, mermaids, and talking animals. Plagued by sexual guilt, racked by psychosomatic disorders, possessed of an eggshell ego, locked inside a gaunt and ungainly body, Andersen pitted his wits against his milieu in a lifelong struggle for recognition. What fascinating subject matter! Shame about the odd typo in the Danish, otherwise a balanced and sensitive account of Denmark's greatest export.