Hans Christian Anderson
1802 - 1875
by Todd Richmond
365Gay.com Features Editor

Hans Christian Anderson was born on April 2, 1805, in Odense, Denmark. As a child he shunned most of the things other boys in the village were doing. Hans preferred to stay home an make doll's clothes. Throughout his early life he suffered from poverty and neglect. At the age of 11, his father died and Hans went to work, as a tailor's apprentice. All those years making doll's clothes paid off.

But, three years later, when he was 14, Hans was off to the bright lights of Copenhagen. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He was torn between becoming a dancer or an opera singer.

The young blonde was "discovered" by a pair of gay musicians shortly after he arrived in the city and it wasn't long before he discovered a third option. The pair paid him for "his kindness" to them.

From there he was off to his first big job. Lover to Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Theater. Collin had Hans educated and encouraged him to write.

The rest is history.

Andersen had poetry and prose published and plays produced beginning in 1822. His first success was "A Walk from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of the Island of Amager in the Years 1828 and 1829" (1829), a fantastic tale imitative of the style of German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Andersen's first novel, The Improviser (1835; translated 1845), was well received by critics, and his first book of fairy tales was published the same year.

Andersen traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Africa and continued to write novels, plays, and travel books, but it was his more than 150 stories for children that established him as one of the great figures of world literature.

Andersen's tales of fantasy, which include "The Ugly Duckling" (1843), "The Emperor's New Clothes" (1837), "The Snow Queen" (1844), "The Red Shoes" (1845), and "The Little Mermaid" (1837), were innovative in their handling of sophisticated feelings and ideas and in their use of the vocabulary and constructions of spoken language.