The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (The Annotated Books)

Hans Christian Andersen

Nov 2007 · The Annotated Books Book 5 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

A richly entertaining and informative collection of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, annotated by one of America's leading folklore scholars. In her most ambitious annotated work to date, Maria Tatar celebrates the stories told by Denmark's "perfect wizard" and re-envisions Hans Christian Andersen as a writer who casts his spell on both children and adults. Andersen's most beloved tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Little Mermaid," are now joined by "The Shadow" and "Story of a Mother," mature stories that reveal his literary range and depth. Tatar captures the tales' unrivaled dramatic and visual power, showing exactly how Andersen became one of the world's ten most translated authors, along with Shakespeare, Dickens, and Marx. Lushly illustrated with more than one hundred fifty rare images, many in full color, by artists such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen will captivate readers with annotations that explore the rich social and cultural dimensions of the nineteenth century and construct a compelling portrait of a writer whose stories still fascinate us today.

About the author

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), famous Danish author and poet, is beloved by children and adults the world around for his famous children's stories such as "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," The Ugly Duckling," "The Emperor's New Clothes," and "The Princess and the Pea," among many others.

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Research Professor and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University. The editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales and The Annotated Brothers Grimm, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Julie K. Allen is assistant professor in the Department of Scandanavian Studies at University of Wisconsin. She is co-translator of The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, with Maria Tatar.