Hans Christian Andersen

Born in a slum and struggling through his youth to break through Denmark's class structure, Hans Christian Andersen always considered himself an outsider. And so his plays, novels, and especially his fairy tales are populated by outsiders, some of whom do not live happily ever after. The young Andersen initially hoped to rise from his impoverishment as an actor, but a theater director instead raised money to send him to school. In 1829, he gained his first success not as an actor but as a writer, with "A Walk From Holmen's Canal to the East Point of the Island of Amager in the...