As a child, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was poor and forced to work for a living as a tailor’s apprentice. He suffered a lifelong unrequited love for opera singer Jenny Lind. His “fairy tales” are full of orphaned, abandoned, children, inanimate objects that suffer human emotions, and allegorical figures—the Ugly Duckling, the Little Mermaid—who speak […]
