The wind blows everywhere, pushing the clouds, slipping through the cracks in the walls and so sees lots of things we cannot see. This is why it knows so many stories: here, it tells the story of Valdermar Daae and his daughters. Valdermar Daae was an alchemist of royal blood and possessed great wealth as only those of royal blood can. But his stubbornness in finding the recipe for red gold could lead to his downfall... Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

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.

Rediscover your childhood's favourite fairy tales or introduce a young reader to the magical world of one of the greatest storytellers, Hans Christian Andersen. Nearly two centuries after they were first published, Andersen's fairy tales remain as tales of good and evil, love and loss, and loyalty in the face of great hardships. They are readily accessible to children, but present lessons of virtue for mature readers as well, as they express themes that transcend age and nationality. Andersen's fairy tales have been translated into more than 125 languages and have become culturally embedded in our collective consciousness. In this volume, you will find a wide selection of both well-known and less well-known stories. Enjoy and let them carry you away into a magical world... "Little Known Tales and Treasured Classics" includes 171 tales. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

This book offers new, often unexpected, but always intriguing portraits of the writers of classic fairy tales. For years these authors, who wrote from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, have been either little known or known through skewed, frequently sentimentalized biographical information. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were cast as exemplars of national virtues; Hans Christian Andersen's life became—with his participation—a fairy tale in itself. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, the prim governess who wrote moral tales for girls, had a more colorful past than her readers would have imagined, and few people knew that nineteen-year-old Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy conspired to kill her much-older husband. Important figures about whom little is known, such as Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, are rendered more completely than ever before. Uncovering what was obscured for years and with newly discovered evidence, contributors to this fascinating and much-needed volume provide a historical context for Europe's fairy tales.

Encyclopedic in its coverage, this one-of-a-kind reference is ideal for students, scholars, and others who need reliable, up-to-date information on folk and fairy tales, past and present. Folktales and fairy tales have long played an important role in cultures around the world. They pass customs and lore from generation to generation, provide insights into the peoples who created them, and offer inspiration to creative artists working in media that now include television, film, manga, photography, and computer games. This second, expanded edition of an award-winning reference will help students and teachers as well as storytellers, writers, and creative artists delve into this enchanting world and keep pace with its past and its many new facets. Alphabetically organized and global in scope, the work is the only multivolume reference in English to offer encyclopedic coverage of this subject matter. The four-volume collection covers national, cultural, regional, and linguistic traditions from around the world as well as motifs, themes, characters, and tale types. Writers and illustrators are included as are filmmakers and composers—and, of course, the tales themselves. The expert entries within volumes 1 through 3 are based on the latest research and developments while the contents of volume 4 comprises tales and texts. While most books either present readers with tales from certain countries or cultures or with thematic entries, this encyclopedia stands alone in that it does both, making it a truly unique, one-stop resource.

Hans Christian Andersen is indisputably the best known of all Scandinavian writers, his tales and stories having been translated probably into more languages than any other work except the Bible. He is also one of the greatest travelers of nineteenth-century belles lettres and few were the major European cities, capitals, and countries he did not visit, many of them several times: Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Paris, and London. He met and became friends with some of the most outstanding representatives of the European artistic community: Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas père, Franz Grillparzer, Heinrich Heine, the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Clara and Robert Schumann, to mention a few. Andersen was the first notable Danish writer of proletarian origin, and even though he was never able to overcome his personal traumas, he became extremely successful in climbing the social ladder receiving invitations wherever he went from nobility and royalty and being showered with recognition and decorations. He read aloud to and was feted by Maximilian II of Bavaria, Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, Grand Duchess Sophia of Austria, and Friedrich August II of Saxony. Even though he also was a frequent visitor at the Danish court Andersen always felt more appreciated abroad. In spite of Andersen's status as a world-renowned writer, no critical treatment has thus far discussed him as a key figure in European contemporary culture and a cosmopolitan personality. The contributors to the present volume -- all of whom are acclaimed Andersen scholars -- have made extensive use of the vast material available in Andersen's diaries, almanacs, autobiographies, and letters. Most of this material, now made available in English for the first time, allows a new Andersen to emerge, different from the traditional portrayal of him as a content and happy storyteller -- a myth indeed! To the contrary, all contributors of this volume discuss his complexity, the traumas and disillusionments of a professional artist constantly struggling to maintain his position and incessantly worried about running out of inspiration. This volume -- besides presenting biographical information in an international perspective -- focuses on Andersen's fascinating psychological make-up, his taste in music, literature, and the pictorial arts, the contemporary critical reception of his work, and explores his creative universe in a more general sense including his poetry, novels, plays, and travelogues. Andersen's overall artistic achievements are viewed in the context of world literature.