Hans Christian Andersen or simply H.C. Andersen, (April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories are "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling".

During Andersen's lifetime he was feted by Royalty and acclaimed as having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into well over a hundred languages and continue to be published in "millions of copies all over the world" (from wikipedia.org)

In the English-speaking world, the stories "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes", and "The Princess and the Pea" remain popular and are widely read. "The Emperor's new clothes" and "ugly duckling" have both passed into the English language as well-known expressions.

In the Copenhagen harbor there is a statue of The Little Mermaid, placed in honor of Hans Christian Andersen. 2 April, Andersen's birthday, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

About a third of Andersen's stories have been translated into Interlingua, and the majority into Esperanto. His home in Odense, Denmark, features a computer displaying samples of his work in each language in which it appears. The sample in Interlingua is the story "The days of the week".

The year 2005 was the bicentenary of Andersen's birth and his life and work was celebrated around the world. In Denmark, particularly, the nation's most famous son has been feted like no other literary figure.

A $12.5m theme park based on Andersen's tales and life opened in Shanghai at the end of 2006. Multi-media games as well as all kinds of cultural contests related to the fairytales are available to visitors. He was chosen as the star of the park because he is a "nice, hardworking person who was not afraid of poverty", Shanghai Gujin Investment general manager Zhai Shiqiang was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying. (BBC Asia-Pacific 8/11/06)

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PDF version, 2.1MB, 118Pages.

Stories from Hans Christian Andersen with Illustrations by Edmund Dulac is a publication of the Pennsylvania State University.

Cover Design: Jim Manis; all images are by Edmund Dulac and are free of copyright restrictions within the United States

Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University

Useful Links:

• The Hans Christian Andersen Center - contains many Andersen's stories in Danish and English
• The Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense has a large digital collection of Hans Christian Andersen papercuts, drawings and portraits - Also you can follow his travels across Europe and explore his Nyhavn study.
• Hans Cristian Andersen at the Internet Movie Database
• Hans Christian Andersen Bicentenary Website from Danish Broadcasting Corp. (DR)- Features audio fairytales and interactive, multimedia features in Danish and English
• Andersen's Fairy Tales public domain audio book at LibriVox
• Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales and Stories
• The Orders and Medals Society of Denmark has descriptions of Hans Christian Andersen's Medals and Decorations.
• And the cobbler's son became a princely author Details of Andersen's life and the celebrations.
• Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales in English, Russian and Ukrainian
• Hans Christian Andersen: Fairytales and Stories Text of most of Andersen's fairy tales, with an extensive introduction and art based on Andersen's papercuts.
• Works by Hans Christian Andersen at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Hans Christian Andersen at Internet Archive. Scanned, color illustrated first editions.
• Hans Christian Andersen Information (mainly in Danish) contains information about his life, childhood home, Hans Christian Andersen House and museum, fairy tales and stories, literary activities, drawings, papercuts and picture pages.
• Andersen online portrait gallery
• Funabashi H. C. Andersen Park (in Japanese) Main Article : H. C. Andersen Park (アンデルセン公園)
• Hans Christian Andersen paintings by artist Erik Bagge Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales seen with the eyes and pencil of the Danish artist Erik Bagge.
• WorldCat Identities page for 'Andersen, H. C. 1805-1875 (Hans Christian)'
• The Oxford Complete edition of Fairy Tales & other stories, Illustrated book 1914, his complete works 1835 to 1872 (in English)

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