I love Hans Christian Andersen. I love his deranged and depressing stories. Three of my favorite fairytales are his, and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage for my F*cked Up Fairy Tales from poking fun at him. But he is the first person on my list of “Dead or Alive People I’d Like at My Dinner Party.”
Despite this, it took me approximately one thousand years to get around to reading the well-received biography I purchased a while back, Hans Christian Andersen: the Life of a Storyteller. I was pointed in the direction of this biography by an article in the Guardian about how he documented his masturbation in his daily journals. That tidbit came from Jackie Wullschläger’s biography, the first to delve into Andersen’s sexuality and break down some of the myths around him (built not only by wimpy media like the Danny Kaye musical, but Andersen’s unreliable autobiographies too).
Despite the racy introduction to this biography, and the fact that it does delve into Andersen’s love life (or, mostly lack thereof), the biography is a very rich and sympathetic life story that not only lays out the facts and scandals, but analyzes his works against those very things. I felt a little silly putting off reading it for so long – the simple fact of the matter is, I have a hard time motivating myself to read adult nonfiction and fiction for awhile (though I’m getting out of that funk). However, I now believe that fate was waiting for me to read it at just the right time: I just got back from my honeymoon, a trip to Europe that included five days in Denmark. I started the book the week of my honeymoon, and read much of it during my stops in Copenhagen and Odense. It was the perfect setting to get to know Hans Christian, as he was called by his friends.
Naturally, Andersen’s romantic desires are the big draw of this book. It was published in 2001, and it was obviously important to Wullschläger to document the full spectrum of Andersen’s sexuality. By now, it is fairly well-known that Andersen had a long-unrequited love for one of his best friends, Edvard Collin, and the story is that he wrote “The Little Mermaid” in response to Collin’s engagement. That is essentially true, but oversimplified! Andersen’s love for Collin was very apparent, but their friendship was a life-long one, and Andersen repeatedly made overtures to Collin for a more intimate relationship through their entire lives, including a request that Collin and his wife and Andersen be buried together. Andersen also had a crush on one of Collin’s sisters. It seemed he was Laurie to the Collins’ March Family, but unfortunately he never found his Amy within them. There were several other gentlemen he made overtures to, and a couple that reciprocated. His crush on Jenny Lind was the most fervent one he had on any woman, and it was intense! But he spent much of his life very lonely.
Other sections I particularly liked:
- The coverage of his friendship with Charles Dickens! This is another anecdote some folks are familiar with, how he overstayed his welcome at the Dickens. But as with any story, it’s richer for the full picture. While Dickens eventually became exasperated with Andersen and cut off their friendship, it started out very well – both men were mutual big fans of the others work. But between Andersen’s troubles with the English language and his imperceptiveness to social cues (hard to say if that was a neurodivergence or his self-absorbed nature or both), he annoyed everyone at the household, right as Dickens and his wife Catherine were about to be separated. What a disaster.
- The time spent on Jenny Lind. Wullschläger essentially includes a mini-biography of her, to showcase why Andersen may have been so infatuated with her (mostly boiling down to how similarly the two were brought up). Really hammered in how much I hate the Lind storyline in The Greatest Showman (not that I like much about that movie’s interpretation of history to begin with).
- So much from Andersen’s letters is quoted in the books! It’s clear how much time the biographer spent with his personal papers.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the life of the writer!
P.S. Andersen and the Collins were buried together, but at some point the family had Edvard and his wife’s bodies moved to the family vault. HCA couldn’t even catch a break with Edvard after death.
