Hans Christian Andersen was a storyteller for children of all ages. He gave us the now standard versions of many traditional folk tales as well as original stories that have enchanted generations of readers. "The Little Match Girl," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Ugly Duckling," are just a few of his beloved titles. Andersen was also much more than a writer of children's tales. 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. He was a man with demons, dreams, yearnings, and visions-a man of flesh and blood. This startling, immensely readable, and definitive new biography by Danish author Jens Andersen (no relation to Hans Christian Andersen) is essential to a full understanding of the man whose writing has influenced the lives of readers young and old for centuries. Delving deeply into archives and correspondence, Jens Andersen sheds brilliant new light on Hans Christian Andersen's writings-the 156 published fairy tales, as well as the novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and non-fiction-and on the writer whose own life had many aspects of the fairy tale.

As did some of the memorable characters he created, Andersen grew up in miserable and impoverished circumstances, and as an adult he took steps to keep what he called his "common" background well hidden, propagating myths about his life and family, partially to create a romantic distance from his true background. In this new biography, translated by the PEN translation award-winning Tiina Nunnally, Jens Andersen uncovers much about this man that has never been revealed before. Book jacket.