In them, you'll find beauty, tragedy, nature, religion, artfulness, deception, betrayal, love, death, judgment, penance, and-occasionally-a happy ending. Today, his stories can be read in over one hundred languages.īut no matter what language they're in, Andersen's tales have got something for everyone. He hungered for recognition at home (Denmark) and abroad-and he got it! Eventually. In addition to his fairy tales, Andersen wrote poems, plays, novels, travel books, essays, and more. But he didn't just write short stories, and his intended audience wasn't restricted to children. Not bad, eh? The dude was prolific, that's for sure.

There are stories based on folklore ('Little Claus and Big Claus,' 'The Traveling Companion') alongside dream-like musings on the nature of religion and art ('The Little Match Girl' and 'The Nightingale').Īndersen first started publishing his tales in 1837, and by 1874, he'd published 156 of 'em. And these tales cover a wide range of topics in a variety of tones. Andersen wrote some pretty strange stuff.Ī few of his other tales are well known-'The Ugly Duckling,' 'The Snow Queen,' 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' and 'The Steadfast Tin Solider' spring to mind-but you've probably never heard of plenty of 'em. Oh yeah, and the whole point of the mermaid trying to marry the prince in the first place is to get in on his whole eternal soul thing, since mer-people lack souls and thus cannot go to heaven.

The sea witch gruesomely cuts out the mermaid's tongue as part of the deal.

First of all, Andersen's mermaid dies at the end.

In fact, 'changed' might be too mild a word, since aside from the basics of the plot-the little mermaid makes a bargain with the sea witch to have a shot at a human prince-pretty much everything is different. Everyone's seen Disney's The Little Mermaid, right? (If you haven't, you should probably get up from your computer now and go watch it because… you really haven't seen it? Like, really? It's a classic.) Some of you probably know that Disney didn't write the story: they adapted it from the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, and changed it quite a lot.

Hans christian andersen fairy tales