Customer Reviews

The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Deluxe Edition (Literary Classics)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Includes a few long stories (The Shoes of Fortune; The Snow Queen) and a bunch of short stories (The Emperor's New Clothes; The Real Princess) by Hans Christian Andersen, although this is by no means all that he wrote.

A more definitive collection of his work is Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen.

Stories included are:

The Emperor's New Clothes
The Swineherd
The Real Princess (this is the Princess and the Pea)
The Shoes of Fortune
The Fir Tree
The Snow Queen
The Leap-Frog
The Elderbush
The Bell
The Old House
The Happy Family
The Story of a Mother
The False Collar
The Shadow
The Little Match Girl
The Dream of Little Tuk
The Naughty Boy
The Red Shoes

See my customer images.

The pages have gold-leafed edges, and there is a ribbon bookmark. There is also some metallic on the cover, and the illustrations on the inside are great. I have not read the text (giving it as a gift for a new baby), but the type is easy to read. The paper is of the super-thin Norton Anthology/Bible variety (hence the 4 stars), but anything thicker would make the book large and heavy, so understood. That said, read it to your kids, but don't let them play with it too hard or you'll probably end up with torn pages. The price of this book is great though, for a decent quality hardback that is a full collection.

Excellent edition, however I had hoped to receive one with colour plates rather than the black and white plates. This was my only disappointment. The book was luxuriously bound and beautifully put together. All the stories are there, and it is funny how ones memories can play tricks as I thought the description in the story The Tinder Box described one of the dogs as having 'eyes like saucers' when the book texted 'eyes like teacups' or 'eyes like towers'. I am in no position to argue, but the story still remains magical.

Worth having this in any serious book collection, but as the pages are quite fragile I would suggest avoiding letting children having free run of this in case it gets damaged, perhaps until they are at least about 8 with advanced reading capabilities.

There are many better translations out there, so there is no excuse to produce something that reads badly. I was disappointed and bought another edition. Mine is being resold on Amazon. I hate these bogus "classics."

This is a good book, I only wish that the pages were thicker and that the stories were spaced in a more, well, spacious way. the space between the end of one story and the begining of the next is only as big as a few lines. the type is also really small. None of this is really a problem, I understand that if they made the print larger, the spacing between stories larger, and made the pages thicker the book would probably weight 25lbs...and that would make reading it difficult wouldn't it? I am really glad that I got it.

There are some Kindle version formatting issues with this version, I'm afraid. There are a few points at which there should be poetry or quotations (italicized, indented text) but they are missing. Not a huge problem, but this means a long poem is missing from "The Shoes of Fortune" and the punch line of "The Old House" is lacking.

Aside from that, I found this collection uneven, and remembered why as I child I largely preferred Grimm's Tales.

There are a few real winners. I forgot how much I like "The Snow Queen". It's a long meandering tale with plenty of intriguing minor characters and the edges of lots of other stories surrounding the core. The scene in which Gerda hears the story that each flower knows was beautiful and very surreal. I adore the side plot about the vicious, but ultimately kindhearted, little robber girl. The ending is sort of a let down, sadly, but only because the first 3/4 are so good.

I also really enjoyed the other long one: "The Shoes of Fortune." It consists of a series of sub-stories about the eponymous shoes, which cause the wearer to receive whatever they wish for. Unlike in a more traditional fairy tale, the wish-receivers have no knowledge that it is the shoes that are affecting them, and the overall moral is 'be careful what you wish for'. The second section is especially amusing, in which a townsperson who had thoroughly romanticized the middle ages finds himself back there...much to his dismay.

"The Fir Tree" is moralizing, but has quite lovely use of language. "The Emperor's New Clothes" is a classic. "The Shadow" is proto-Twilight Zone. I approve of that.

There are quite a few more that are up and down: either not that interesting, or simply too odd for me. A few are quite creepy, and a few like imitations of older stories.

Then there is the one in which Cupid is represented as a "naughty boy", that one should attempt to avoid, although usually in vain. It was so bizarre that I hopped over to Wikipedia for a bio, and, sure enough, Andersen was plagued by unrequited love. No surprise there.

Then there are a few that I hated. Ones like "The Story of a Mother" or the infamous "Little Match Girl," or even "The Red Shoes." They are well written, often pretty, but I am personally not okay with stories, ostensibly for children, in which the end is about how beautiful it is when poor children die horribly, because they go to heaven. Not okay. That is some pernicious and nasty stuff there.

The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Deluxe Edition is a very nice book. Of course the fairy tales that we all love are in the book, but the book itself is pretty. I am very happy with it.

The book was in extremely good conditions when it was delivered & the gold tips with the leather binding was great as this looks like an older version of the book like hard back books used to be made that lasted a very long time.

This is a good collection of Andersen's fairy tales and incldues all of the stories I remember reading from my childhood. I purchased this item on the Kindle, and I have found it hard to navigate from story to story to find the one that I am looking for. I purchased this because I thought I would be able to read to my children from this version. While I can do that, I think that a paper version would be more appropriate.

This is a very good book. The cover may be a little boring but the quality is very nice especially considering the price. The pages are bordered with gold. The book looks like it's worth $50. Too bad my over priced college text books were not this nice or affordable. It's not often you find a hard cover book with gold leaves for $20!

This book contains a lot of short stories. Do not be shocked if many of the stories are somber. I selected three stories that I was not familiar with. All three stories were not your typical fairy tales. When I think of fairy tales I think of a light story with morals and happy endings for kids and adults. The three stories I read had moral lessons but they are geared towards adults.

People will be surprised that Hans Christian Andersen wanted to be known as a serious writer. He didn't target kids as his main audience. Sure, many of his stories are popular with kids but many less popular stories are definitely adult material. For example, I don't want to read any stories about war to my two year old niece. Many adult readers will be surprised by his stories.

In summary, get this book if you want to have a collection of stories from this famous author. You will not be sorry.