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Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)
Diary  1831 (detail, top)
With permission from the Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)
Paper collages for Hanne Henriques Seidelin  1859
With permission from the Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark

 

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Royal Library
Copenhagen Denmark

Hans Christian Andersen
1805–1875

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.