Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life

by Jens Andersen, Tiina Nunnally (Translator)

Hans Christian Andersen was a storyteller for children of all ages, but he was more than that. 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. This startling and immensely readable, definitive new biography by Danish scholar Jens Andersen is essential to a full understanding of the man whose writing has influenced the lives of readers young and old for centuries. Jens Andersen sheds brilliant new light on Hans Christian Andersen’s writings and on the writer whose own life had many aspects of the fairytale. Like some of the memorable characters he created, Andersen grew up in miserable and impoverished circumstances. He later propagated myths about his life and family, but this new biography uncovers much about this man that has never been revealed before.

Genres: Biography, Fairy Tales, Nonfiction, Literature, History, Picture Books

630 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003

About the author

Mr. Andersen has a Ph.D. in Nordic Philology from the University of Copenhagen. He is a former soccer player and coach in Denmark. He has won several Danish literature prizes and recognitions over the years.

Reviews

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and readable biography of Hans Christian Andersen - long though! Interestingly, the biographer includes a kind of literary vignette at the start of each chapter - a kind of imagined short story involving Hans Christian Andersen. I wasn't quite sure what to make of those, and I was honing in on specific aspects of HCA's biography, so I mostly skipped them. HCA is a fascinating figure - very confident and persistent from a young age in his vision of his own destiny as an author, and throughout his life a constant hard worker and prolific producer in his craft. He was famous throughout Europe, though more respected abroad than at home in his native Denmark; an extremely social being for a writer, but also socially strange and awkward, and it seems in later years ever more self-centered.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jens Andersen's biography of Hans Christian Andersen presents a detailed account of the writer's life, mostly in terms of HC Andersen's adult years. This book offers more of a look into HC Andersen's inner life, his inner person.

[Drianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great biography. Very dense. I didn't know before reading it that Andersen was gay; I definitely believed he was afterwards.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

informative and well organized- easy to use for academic papers

[Reni Grueva · Rating 2 out of 5]

the sad irony when the life of a great storyteller is retold as the most boring story

[Shaitanah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exhaustively informative and hard to put down. A complex portrait of a very complicated man.

[Art Wangchu · Rating 1 out of 5]

诘屈聱牙

[Niño Lobo KC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comenzó disgustándome y al final me gustó. Lo mejor, por su puesto, son los cuentos de Andersen. Inesperados, oscuros y tristes, algunos demasiado morales, como era normal para el Andersen de su tiempo. Lo peor fueron algunas anotaciones inútiles y puestas para rellenar. Al principio creí que todas serían absurdas, pero me di cuenta de que muchas eran interesantes. No había leído algo anotado y me gustó la sensación de diálogo que te aporta el punto de vista del analista. La calidad de la edición es insuficiente, sobre todo las imágenes que contiene no valen los 50 euros que pagué para nada. Me sentí estafada al sacar el libro de su plástico. Esperaba encontrar bellas reproducciones de los ilustradores, pero no las encontré. Una decepción completa, pues lo de las ilustraciones es uno de los puntos promocionales principales del libro. No compraría otro como estos a Akal.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book to be read slowly if only to absorb the wealth of material; nearly overwhelming in its careful detail, but fascinating. Conting the footnotes, over 600 pages. Definitely worth the trouble.
Andersen was a very strange man, a very complex man, and had done much more than write fairy tales.