According to scholars, the tale of The Ugly Duckling reflects Hans Christian Andersen’s own feelings of alienation. As a boy, he was teased for his appearance and high-pitched voice. Much like the ugly duckling, only later in life did he become the “swan” — a cultured, world-renowned writer with friends in high places. [1]
Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is remembered as one of the finest and most creative fairy tale authors to live. Although he was also a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, his fairy tales are his greatest contribution to literature.
Andersen was born to a poor family on 2 April 1805 in Odense, Denmark. He was the only child of Hans Andersen, a shoemaker, and his illiterate wife, Anne Marie. Andersen’s father, who had received an elementary school education, introduced his son to literature by reading to him, but passed away when Hans Christian was only 11 years old. To support her family, his mother worked as a washerwoman, taking in laundry from wealthier families and washing it by hand. She remarried two years later, and Andersen was sent to a local school for poor children where he received a basic education. He said that his years at school were the darkest and most bitter years of his life, but despite these challenges, he had a vivid imagination and developed a love for storytelling from a young age.
At fourteen, Andersen moved to Copenhagen and was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre as an actor, which ultimately failed. A director there was impressed by Andersen’s promise as a writer and arranged for him to attend elite private schools, enabling him to begin his career as a writer.
Andersen’s 156 stories have been translated into 125 languages and are today embedded in our consciousness. In his era, children’s stories were meant to educate and moralise. But Andersen wrote his stories in a chatty, informal style and aimed to amuse and his wonderful fairy tales laid the groundwork for most of the great children’s literature to come.
Andersen died on the 4 August 1875 after a long period of illness.
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