Folktales from Europe/ Hans Christian Andersen

From Germany to Denmark, following folk tales in Europe. Can we talk about folk tales without mentioning The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, and The Emperor's New Clothes? These and many others of such fairy tales that enchanted us as children and lived across centuries, were written by the greatest fairy tale writer, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark. As a young boy, he had great intelligence, imagination a passionate love for literature. He made himself a small theatre and some wooden puppets, where he spent hours making clothes for then and using them in performing plays, mostly of Shakespeare. At the age of 11, his father died and he had to work in a cigarette factory where he was humiliated by his fellows for being of soft and sensitive nature, that they always called him a girl. After working as an actor and singer in Copenhagen, and there his talent as a writer and poet start to be noticed till his collection of fairy tales was published in 1836. His collection gained him instant success and love by children, soon it was translated to English and they are still being sold in millions of copies each year. Andersen fell ill in 1872, shortly before his death in August 1875, he consulted a composer about the music for his funeral, saying: "Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps." Unlike most of the fairy tales, Andersen's have a great deal of emotions and sadness within the plot. Not all of them have happy endings and some are really very melancholic. This could be attributed to his miserable childhood and unhappy personal life. His ugly physique and being humiliated by his companions as a child followed by dazzling success and fame when he grew up is closely linked to his masterpiece, The Ugly Duckling, which is believed to be Andersen's own biography. Below is a link for the enchanting tales in perfect English translation, I strongly recommend The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling, I know we have heard them or have seen them as cartoons, but trust me, reading them from their original source is something else. http://hca.gilead.org.il/