Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

Andersen began publishing fairy tales in 1835, in thin booklets that reviewers thought beneath him, and kept at it for nearly forty years. They are not folk tales retold but stories of his own making, written in a spoken, informal Danish that offended critics and delighted children, and they are far less consoling than their reputation suggests.

This collection gathers more than a hundred of them, arranged alphabetically: The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor’s New Suit, The Snow Queen, The Tinder-Box, The Wild Swans, The Brave Tin Soldier, The Red Shoes, The Nightingale, The Little Match-Seller, The Princess and the Pea, and many that are rarely reprinted.

The English text is an uncredited Victorian translation; the translator’s name has not come down with it, and Bibliomancer does not guess at it. The collection is issued complete in two matching volumes.