Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Second Series is a collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen was a Danish author and poet mostly known for his fairy tales for children. Excerpt: "FAR away, in the land to which the swallows fly when it is winter, dwelt a king who had eleven sons, and one daughter, named Eliza. The eleven brothers were princes, and each went to school with a star on his breast and a sword by his side. They wrote with diamond pencils on golden slates and learned their lessons so quickly and read so easily that every one knew they were princes. Their sister Eliza sat on a little stool of plate-glass and had a book full of pictures, which had cost as much as half a kingdom. Happy, indeed, were these children; but they were not long to remain so, for their father, the king, married a queen who did not love the children, and who proved to be a wicked sorceress."

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling." During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide, and was feted by royalty. His poetry and stories have been translated into more than 150 languages. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films. -wikipedia

Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales First Series His most famous fairy tales include this 20 fairy stories. 1. THE FIR TREE 2. LITTLE TUK 3. THE UGLY DUCKLING 4. LITTLE IDA’S FLOWERS 5. THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER 6. LITTLE THUMBELINA 7. SUNSHINE STORIES 8. THE DARNING-NEEDLE 9. THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL 10. THE LOVING PAIR 11. THE LEAPING MATCH 12. THE HAPPY FAMILY 13. THE GREENIES 14. OLE-LUK-OIE THE DREAM GOD 15. THE MONEY BOX 16. ELDER-TREE MOTHER 17. THE SNOW QUEEN 18. THE ROSES AND THE SPARROWS 19. THE OLD HOUSE 20. THE CONCEITED APPLE BRANCH

The Hans Andersen Fairy Tales will be read in schools and homes as long as there are children who love to read. As a story-teller for children the author has no rival in power to enlist the imagination and carry it along natural, healthful lines. The power of his tales to charm and elevate runs like a living thread through whatever he writes. In the two books in which they are here presented they have met the tests and held an undiminishing popularity among the best children's books. They are recognized as standards, and as juvenile writings come to be more carefully standardized, their place in permanent literature will grow wider and more secure. A few children's authors will be ranked among the Immortals, and Hans Andersen is one of them.The text of the present edition is a reprint of an earlier one which was based upon a sentence-by-sentence comparison of the four or five translations current in Europe and America. It has been widely commended as enjoyable reading, while faithful to the letter and spirit of the Danish original. A slight abridgment has been made in two of the longer stories. The order of the selections adapts the reading to the growing child-the First Series should be sufficiently easy for children of about eight or nine years old.

Hans Christian Andersen; often referred to in Scandinavia as H. C. Andersen; 2 April 1805 - 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, express themes that transcend age and nationality. Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Little Mermaid," "The Nightingale," "The Snow Queen," "The Ugly Duckling," "Thumbelina," and many more. His stories have inspired ballets, both animated and live-action films, and plays.

Reproduction of the original: Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

This definitive collection of work from Hans Christian Andersen—one of the immortals of world literature—not only includes his own notes to his stories but is the only version available in trade paperback that presents Andersen's fairy tales exactly as he collected them in the original Danish edition of 1874. Recognizing the literary merit of Andersen's own simple colloquial language, which Victorian translators and their imitators very often altered to sentimentalize or vulgarize, translator Erik Haugaard has remained faithful to the original text. The fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen wrote, such as "The Snow Queen," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Red Shoes," and "The Nightingale," are remarkable for their sense of fantasy, power of description, and acute sensitivity, and they are like no others written before or since. Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who collected and retold folklore, Andersen adopted the most ancient literary forms of the fairy tale and the folktale and distilled them into a genre that was uniquely his own.