Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life [Paperback]

Jens Andersen (Author), Tiina Nunnally (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2006

On the 200th anniversary of his birth, a new biography of the much-loved children's author, Hans Christian Andersen 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.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Danish biographer Andersen (no relation to his subject) provides a fascinating backdrop for the life of the acclaimed fairy tale writer on the 200th anniversary of his birth. The biography opens with 14-year-old Hans's arrival in Copenhagen and demonstrates how the teen's determination to break onto the stage, coupled with a prevailing sense of philanthropy among the wealthy, resulted in unique opportunities for the boy from Odense. His brilliant strategy to get one of his plays produced at the Royal Theater offers deep insight into his character. Throughout, Andersen deftly juxtaposes the facts with Hans's rewriting of his life in his autobiography, The Fairy Tale of My Life. Perhaps most provocatively, Andersen makes the case that Hans was shaped by the events and ideas of his era; he refers to the writer's rivalry with Kierkegaard and, coincidentally, the "elucidating light" that the philosopher's views about love cast on Hans's "preferred role" as "the chaste lover." The biographer reveals in some detail the unusual relationship between Hans and Edvard Collin as well as other platonic relationships with both men and women, describing the era's tolerant approach to love between the sexes. Some readers may be frustrated by the biographer's tendency to raise issues and then put off further exploration to a later chapter. But most will be caught up in this smoothly translated, accessible evaluation of a budding genius placed in the context of his time. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The Danes may consider Hans Christian Andersen, along with his contemporary (and rival) Soren Kierkegaard, one of their foremost literary treasures, but in America, when thought of at all, he is relegated to the children's shelves. This thick, fascinating new biography makes a good case for the great Dane's place among grownups. For the evocative, gracefully written fairy tales on which his international fame rests have great literary merit, and Andersen was a well-rounded man of letters, equally at home writing for the theater, for newspapers and magazines, and for book publishers. He was also a fascinating bundle of contradictions, and the extensively researched book reveals his multifacetedness: his considerable gifts as an oral storyteller; his eccentric, often annoying public habits; his ambivalent sexuality; his bouts of narcissism; his painfully slow transformation from rough-hewn provincial and awkward melodramatist into brilliant, internationally famous writer-celebrity. The biography is best and most moving when it is frank about formerly suppressed aspects of Andersen's life: the unrequited love he felt and never fully acknowledged for his friend Edvard Collin, and the intense, neurotic, frustrating (for Andersen) nonsexual relationship with his beloved friend and muse, Jenny Lind. Tiina Nunnally, the woman responsible for Englishing Peter Hoeg's best-selling Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993) and the newest versions of Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and selected Andersen Fairy Tales (2005), has again gracefully translated from the Danish. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 630 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP; Rep Tra edition (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158567737X
• ISBN-13: 978-1585677375
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,416,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Radically Bizarre Source for the Best Fairy Tales, June 12, 2005

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Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hans Christian Andersen (Hardcover)

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN as written by Jens Andersen and beautifully translated form the Danish by Tiina Nunnally is that sort of biography we all long to read: the facts are all well-researched, the data is all in place, but the book reads like a novel.

Andersen's background is a fairytale unto itself and if ever there was a man whose beginnings belied his later success and durability as a writer, this man is it. Gratefully his oeuvre was appreciated in his lifetime and his wondrous tales have pleasured young and old alike for well over a hundred years. In his native Denmark he is considered a near 'saint' and his books have been translated into every language and are in the homes of children of all ages throughout the world.

This biography is, thankfully, not afraid to discuss those darker aspects of Andersen's life, but the way in which the author deals with this difficult information is the model of excellent reportage. The narrative style of Andersen on Andersen is by far the most positive aspect of this fine book.

Despite the weight (over 600 pages) of this tome, it is not daunting in the least. It reads quickly and entertainingly and is as fine as any biography of the world's favorite children's writer on the shelves. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, June 05

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars quirky life, double life, December 17, 2010

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Roger Petrich "omnivorous reader" (Blue Heaven, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life (Paperback)

This is the first bio of Andersen I've read so all was new. Andersen fictionalized his own life for his own contemporaries, so this author has a lot of work to bring out the true details, and psychological contradictions in his life and in his story telling. Andersen seemed to be sort of a "Peter Pan" - avoiding growing up; and working hard to hold on to his "innocence". Many crushes and love affairs [with persons both male and female], but according to this author all "platonic". A charmed life, yet not without dark secrets.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Crafted 600 Page Biography Covering His Life, November 29, 2005

By 

J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hans Christian Andersen (Hardcover)

This is a well written and generally what one would call an excellent 600 page biography of perhaps Denmark's most famous writer who lived from 1805 to 1875. The book has lots of photographs and many interesting pieces of information. It goes into his life at a fine level of detail, and attempts to combine his life story with his travels and his writings, explaining the private and public personalities. I found the book to be expensive at book stores, very expensive, almost too expensive to buy, but it is less expensive as an on line purchase. It is written in a folksy style, a bit different from many biographies, and each chapter has a short one page introduction in italics to set the mood for that chapter. It covers most of his life in great detail more or less in chronological order starting with the young teen age Andersen about 14 - from poor parents - and his break at the Royal Theatre around 1820. There are some excellent photographs of the aging Andersen.

The book tells a fairly detailed story of his breaks and opportunities that allowed him to finish school and obtain some university level education at the Copenhagen University. The book includes many references to his writings including his first writings when he was just seventeen. Like many other famous writers such as Dickens, he came from a home where the father had failed to provide economic support and he had to find work in his youth to survive - and then his father died when he was just 11 years old. Like Dickens and others, that changed his outlook on the world, and Andersen wrote hundreds of stories and short pieces often with the aim of entertaining children to make them happier. Despite the economic hardships, he did gain some inspiration from his father. His mother was interested in folklore and that was passed onto Andersen and reflected in some of his writings. There are chapters on his travels and some on interactions with other European writers of his era in Germany, France and England, and in fact he did meet Dickens. An interesting chapter describes how the famous Andersen lives in his own country of Denmark often living as a free guest as a celebrity getting free meals and lodging - in a way similar to some of our modern athletes or movie stars who go to restaurants or resorts and expect to get free meals in exchange for being photographed with the owner, or giving them signed baseballs, etc.

Overall this is a good read and one can get a fairly good understanding of Andersen, right up to his declining years. He made a name for himself as a writer of fairy tales for children - about farm animals and similar that carry on in conversations as if they are people. He expanded this to include his travels as an element of his writings, Italy being one of the most famous countries, but not the only country. This topic is well covered in the book including trips from Denmark to Portugal and elsewhere. The book is very well organized - much more so than many biographies - and it has a good introduction and index, but not much in the way of notes and follow up documentation. Also, as the authors point out, some of the references are written in Danish.

In any case, this is a substantial but easy to read biography, and one is impressed with the effort and the level of detail.

5 stars.