Born Apr. 2, 1805, in Odense; died Aug. 4, 1875, in Copenhagen. Danish writer, son of a shoemaker.

Andersen wrote plays even in childhood. His literary experiments attracted the attention of the management of a Copenhagen theater in 1819. He published a number of poems during 1826–27. Entering school, he wrote the book A Journey on Foot From the Holmen Canal to the Eastern Point of Amager (1829). The seeds of his future tales are evident in his works Shadow Pictures (1831) and Agnete and the Merman (1834). His novels The Improvisatore (1835; Russian translation, 1844) and Only a Fiddler (1837) reflect the conflict, typical for the romantics, between the poet-dreamer and the vulgarity and heartlessness of “high society.” Between 1835 and 1837, Andersen published three collections of Stories Told for Children, which included “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and others. His best stories included “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838), “The Nightingale” (1843), “The Ugly Duckling” (1843), “The Snow Queen” (1844), “The Little Match Girl” (1845), “The Shadow” (1847), and “Mother” (1848). In A Picture Book Without Pictures (1840), Andersen revealed himself a master of the miniature short story. His play Mulatten (1840) was directed against racial inequality. His book of travel sketches A Poet’s Bazaar (1842) was the first version of his autobiography, The Story of My Life (1846; Russian translations, 1851 and 1889). In his novel Two Baronesses (vols. 1–3, 1849) Andersen gave a critical depiction of the country’s feudal past. But he gained, and was confirmed in, his place in the history of world literature as a master storyteller with a remarkable ability for combining romanticism and realism, fantasy and humor, and sometimes irony and satire. A brilliant example of this is the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which L. N. Tolstoy esteemed highly. Andersen used the weapon of laughter to strike at the world of egoism and self-interest, flattery, arrogance, and complacency.