Hans Christian Andersen: A Great Life in Brief, Volume 4

Front Cover
Knopf, 1955 - Authors, Danish - 206 pages
Fairy tales! Stories for children and world-wide fame? It did not seem likely, but this was Hans Andersen. In England and America, Andersen is something of a myth; at the mention of his name, a sentimental faraway look comes into people's eyes. The stories seem so much a part of our heritage that we forget they were ever written and worked over, by a man who was a hard-working writer and a Dane. Andersen's tales are writing of existence, and potent existence at that; for all their fantasy, they are life, universal, eternal; for all their lightness of touch, they are serious. It is difficult for us abroad to realize this, because no writer has been more mutilated by his translators. Andersen's own writing has economy and strength, an inexorableness that is sometimes so cruel that it is not for children at all; it is witty, ironical and humorous, and, though it can be intensely poignant and poetical, it is always crisp. -- Introduction.

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Contents

Section 1
11
Section 2
24
Section 3
51
Copyright

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