Hans Christian Andersen : a new life / Jens Andersen ; translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Andersen, Jens, 1955-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Hans Christian Andersen. English

Language:

Danish

English

Subjects (All):

Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian), 1805-1875.

Andersen, H. C.

Authors, Danish--19th century--Biography.

Authors, Danish.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2)

Physical Description:

624 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Overlook Duckworth, 2005.

Summary:

Hans Christian Andersen was a storyteller for children of all ages. He gave us the now standard versions of many traditional folk tales as well as original stories that have enchanted generations of readers. "The Little Match Girl," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Ugly Duckling," are just a few of his beloved titles.

Andersen was also much more than a writer of children's tales. He was a critical journalist with great enthusiasm for science, an existential thinker, an observant travel-book writer, a passionate novelist, a deft paper cut-out artist, a neurotic hypochondriac, and a man with intense but frustrated sexual desires. He was a man with demons, dreams, yearnings, and visions-a man of flesh and blood. This startling, immensely readable, and definitive new biography by Danish author Jens Andersen (no relation to Hans Christian Andersen) is essential to a full understanding of the man whose writing has influenced the lives of readers young and old for centuries.

Delving deeply into archives and correspondence, Jens Andersen sheds brilliant new light on Hans Christian Andersen's writings-the 156 published fairy tales, as well as the novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and non-fiction-and on the writer whose own life had many aspects of the fairy tale. As did some of the memorable characters he created, Andersen grew up in miserable and impoverished circumstances, and as an adult he took steps to keep what he called his "common" background well hidden, propagating myths about his life and family, partially to create a romantic distance from his true background. In this new biography, translated by the PEN translation award-winning Tiina Nunnally, Jens Andersen uncovers much about this man that has never been revealed before.

Contents:

1 Arrival (1819-1822) 17

A Son of Nature 22

The Courage to Have Talent 28

Dance Pupil 35

Entering the Golden Age 43

Hans Christian Andersen's Debut 51

A Heathen Sense of Nature 56

The Gentle Power of Love 61

2 In the House of Education (1822-1827) 64

The Art of Instilling an Education 70

From Heaven to Hell and Helsingor 76

A Potpourri of Poetry 82

Religious and Poetic Maturation 88

The Dying Child 96

Liberation 100

3 Wild Like a Poet (1827-1832) 105

Father Collin 111

The Hebraic Muller 116

Romantic Walking Tour to Amager 120

Playwright and Academic 127

The Shadow Picture, Riborg Voigt 135

Andersen's Order of Nuns 140

Dear Froken Louise! 143

4 Your Only Fault Was Love (1832-1836) 148

The Men of Romanticism 153

Brothers in Joy and Pain 158

Twin Souls 161

Say "Du" to Me 163

Edvard Collin's Book About Andersen 169

Nameless Love 176

I Want to Be Kissed Too 181

Our Child Agnete 188

The Androgynous One 195

The Improvisatore 201

Wedding in the Collin Family 207

5 In Fairy Land (1835-1840) 213

The First Fairy Tales 223

The Cult of Childhood 231

The Manifesto of the Fantastic 237

Where Did the Fairy Tale Come From? 240

Kierkegaard and Andersen 248

Eternal Rivals 255

6 Distant Shores (1840-1846) 263

Critical Headwinds 268

Dining with the Form Cutters Guild 272

Success at the Royal Theater 276

Fru Heiberg 281

"The Show-Off" 285

By Railroad Through Europe 289

Lovers' Go-Between 296

The Hereditary Grand Duke Carl Alexander 301

Falling in Love with Jenny Lind 308

Reunion with Weimar 315

He Is Not a She 319

7 The Water of Life (1846-1850) 325

The German Autobiography 331

His Childhood Home 336

The Swamp in Only a Fiddler 342

Immoral Fyn 349

Was He the Son of a King? 354

Free Shoemaker and Free Thinker 360

The Odd Father and Son 365

God or Napoleon 369

Anne Marie Andersdatter 374

A Woman with Second Sight from Fyn 379

His Mother's Imploring Letters and Her Death 386

Sister Karen 390

Swinging London 1847 395

Distant Political Clouds 405

8 The Path from Nature to God (1850-1860) 411

The Modern Breakthrough During the Golden Age 416

Lovely Dresden 420

Wagner and Liszt 427

Kaulbach and King Max 434

Rebelling Against Orsted 438

Falling-Out with Charles Dickens 443

9 Among Brothers (1860-1870) 451

Traveling as a Means of Rejuvenation 457

With Jonas Collin in Spain, 1862-1863 462

Two Strange Birds 469

The Swarm of Confidants 473

The Trembling Eyeglasses of the Traveling Life 479

A Visit to Portugal, 1866 484

At a Brothel in Paris 486

10 The Man in the Moon (1870-1875) 495

Collages of Words and Pictures 500

Many Picture Books 505

Writing with Scissors 510

Bella Italia 516

Eroticism in Naples 520

Innocence as Religion 525

Childhood Faith 530

A God Dwells Within Us 533

The Author and Death 537

Morphine 541

The Last Journey 548.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [555]-597) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2 have dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

158567642X

9781585676422

158567737X

9781585677375

0715633619

9780715633618

0715633759

9780715633755

OCLC:

225302071