Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense in 1805, the only son of a shoemaker who died when he was eleven and of a mother who made her living from washing. At fourteen, he left alone for Copenhagen to become an opera singer and attended the dance and singing schools of the Royal Theatre; the theatre's management, including Jonas Collin, had him educated in Slagelse and then in Helsingør, under a headmaster, Simon Meisling, who treated him harshly. A graduate in 1828, he lived by his pen and travelled widely, as far as Constantinople in 1841. He died in 1875, aged seventy, in a villa near Copenhagen.

In the catalogue 1

• TaleThe Little MermaidDen lille havfrueHans Christian Andersen · 1837LiteraturePublic domain