It’s a reasonable question. A week ago I could probably have told you that he wrote The Little Mermaid and that’s about it. But I picked up a copy of the Oxford Classics compilation a while back in Blackwell’s because I’m the kind of nerd who says things like ‘let’s go back to the source material’.
What I discovered is, unsurprisingly, a lot of what Hans Christian Andersen wrote is a little bit weird. Not all of it was new to me, I was aware of the darker sides to The Little Mermaid where she ends up feeling like she’s walking on knives every time she takes a step. But there a whole host of stories that, shock horror, never got turned into disney films. Where is the adorable cartoon called ‘The Naughty Boy’? On second thoughts I’m sure there is one but I’m really not going to search for it…
But yes, I can see how Hans Christian Andersen inspired a lot of other stories and how the themes flowed through to our modern day stories. But it is also completely clear why people tend to read retellings as opposed to the originals. Writing has changed a lot since the 1800s and not totally for the worse.
But I think that’s pretty cool. How from the beginning we were reading fairytale retellings and now we’ve come all the way to retellings that are set in space, or in other worlds. In all of that we’re pulling out the same themes and the same key ingredients years on!
So, time for a chat, have you read any of Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tales and what did you think? What’s your favourite retelling? Let me know in the comments below!
J
I think I had a collection of the original stories that I was mostly terrified of… strong memories of ‘The Swineherd’, ‘The Little Match Girl’, and ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’.
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Yeah the steadfast one was weird…
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I have not read any of them yet, but an author I am in touch with, K.M Shea, bases a lot of her fairy tale retellings off of his stories. A couple of them are referenced in MC Frank’s No Ordinary Star trilogy too.
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I liked his fairy tales because they’re darker than the others I read when I was younger. My favourite fairy tales by him are The Snow Queen, The Wild Swans, and of course, The Little Mermaid.
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I think he does have some really good ones and the dark elements are great but you can tell why some of them have fallen a little into obscurity…
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