Hans Christian Andersen’s stories have been the delight of children for generations. But even if Andersen had not written a single line of a single fairy tale he would still remain a tempting subject for a biographer. In practical life he was essentially a shrewd, observant man of the world, who saw more than most people, because he took the trouble to keep his eyes open. Half his life was spent in traveling up and down Europe; he was more or less intimately acquainted with most of the leading men of letters of his day; he had at his finger ends the literatures of half a dozen languages, and he was as much at home in the prince’s palaces as in the peasant’s hut. Such a man can tell us a good deal, and is well worth listening to.
