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Hans
Christian Andersen (18051875)
Diary 1831 (detail, top)
With permission from the Royal Library,
Copenhagen, Denmark
Hans
Christian Andersen (18051875)
Paper collages for Hanne Henriques Seidelin
1859
With permission from the Royal Library,
Copenhagen, Denmark
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Hans
Christian Andersen
18051875
The
Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen is best
known for his greatly loved children’s stories
such as The Little Mermaid, The Princess
and the Pea and The Tin Soldier. He
also wrote plays, novels and poems, and kept diaries
throughout his life. The diaries present an alternative
impression to the public face of the author by
showing us his privately nervous and sensitive
nature. Entries are dated from his early twenties
until the day he died, and they range in sentiment
from harmonious and optimistic to overly pessimistic.
For instance, his thoughts jump from carefully
recorded impressions of the places and people
he had met, to pedantic notations of any criticism
levelled at his writing. An anonymously published
criticism entitled Letters of a Ghost (1830)
by Henrik Hertz particularly offended him, and
the diary exhibited here records the trip that
Andersen took in 1831 from Copenhagen to Germany
as an escape from this slight.
By
1831, Andersen had established himself as a promising
young writer. He led a hectic social life and
maintained friendships with internationally known
European artists and writers, who fed his craving
for intellectual stimulation and imaginative stories.
From the diaries we learn of his reading, visits
to museums and theatres, and his daily associates.
Apart from their biographical information, the
diaries also served Andersen as a storehouse of
original material to be used in later published
works.
Hans
Christian Andersen also produced hundreds of drawings,
collages and paper cuts. He enjoyed entertaining
the children of friends and acquaintances with
stories and songs, readily making paper cuts on
request. Over 1000 paper cuts have survived as
a testimony to his artistic activity. This paper
cut reflects Andersen’s lifelong interest in the
theatre.
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