Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales - Hardcover

"Hans Christian Andersen is one of the canonical storytellers of the nineteenth century, equally disturbing and delighting for adults as for children. There have been some capable versions available in English, but Tiina Nunnally's seems to me the best. Jackie Wullschlager's introduction will be of enormous value to the reader."
-Harold Bloom

"Tiina Nunnally's new versions of the tales amount to a recuperation of Andersen, in all his strangeness, darkness and comic subversiveness--and Jackie Wullschlager's introduction is invaluable."
-John Banville

"A most welcome new edition. Tiina Nunnally's excellent translation brings the stories to life, while Jackie Wullschlager's scholarly introduction serves as an enlightening complement to the text. I much enjoyed revisiting these seminal tales."
-Penelope Lively

"Jackie Wullschlager's introduction and Tiina Nunnally's translation both succeed admirably in catching the wonderful mixture of tradition-hallowed simplicity and eerie originality that are characteristic of Hans Christian Andersen and his stories."
-Robert Irwin

"Children, prepare yourselves to be delighted. Adults, you are at the mercy of a compelling master storyteller whose gifts are a sweeping imagination, the sorcery of language, and whose tales will leave you amused, joyful, charmed, sometimes perplexed, but most of all, pondering. Don't be surprised if the veiled character studies reveal yourselves, or if bizarre happenings offer a truth you need to know. Through Tiina Nunnally's fresh and sensitive translation, the imagery and subtleties of Andersen's prose shine."
-Susan Vreeland

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama, and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital, who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. He hated school: aged seventeen, he was in a class of twelve-year-olds and was constantly mocked by them and by the teachers. In 1829 his first book - an account of a walking trip - was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. At first, he considered his adult books more important than his fantasies. In later life, however, he began to see that these apparently trivial stories could vividly portray constant features of human life and character, in a charming manner. There were two consequences of this. First, he stopped regarding his stories as trifles written solely for children; second, he began to write more original stories, rather than retelling traditional tales. He once said that ideas for stories `lie in my mind like seeds and only need the kiss of a sunbeam or a drop of malice to flower'. He would often thinly disguise people he liked or disliked as characters in his stories: a woman who failed to return his love becomes the foolish prince in `The Little Mermaid'; his own ugliness and humiliation, or his father's daydream of being descended from a rich and powerful family, are reflected in `The Ugly Duckling'. Hans Andersen's stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and a Disney cartoon, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world. JACKIE WULLSCHLAGER is a literary critic and European Arts Correspondent of the Financial Times. Her biography of Andersen (2000) was published to critical acclaim and great popular success and is now considered the standard life of the writer. She lives in London. TIINA NUNNALLY is known for her many award-winning translations of Nordic fiction, including the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2003. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.