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Collections and Retellings
Frank Granta Books
Hardback £15.00
ISBN: 1862077126
Reviewed by Mary Hoffman
[Armadillo 6.4 Winter 2004]
This handsome new translation is a real treasure house. The Introduction is an eye-opener for anyone brought up on the Danny Kaye film (øWonderful, wonderful Copenhagen!Ó). For a start, did you know that Andersen wrote 36 plays, 6 novels, about the same number of travel books, 100s of poems and around 170 fairy tales?
He also wrote about 14 letters a day, a lot of them attempts to get his work noticed. For Andersen was an early victim of the desire for celebrity: øI covet honour and glory in the same way the miser covets gold,Ó he wrote in 1937.
Poor, awkward and ugly, with long un-coordinated limbs and a protruding nose between tiny eyes, Andersen had an uphill struggle for social acceptance, let alone patronage and fame. But he made it in the end, being on visiting terms with Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens (though he rather outstayed his welcome in the latter's house).
Perhaps no wonder then that he wrote that incomparable tale of transformation, The Ugly Duckling. And yet it is a wonder. This one, like The Tinderbox, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Mermaid, The Nightingale, The Red Shoes, The Little Match Girl and The Snow Queen, was the product of Andersen's own imagination.
Even those with known antecedents, like Thumbelisa (the original title), The Wild Swans and the Emperor's New Clothes, have been given such distinctive twists that it is fair to regard them Andersen's own work. The Franks' notes are invaluable, by the way.
Maybe he was the kind of writer who had to produce a lot of dross for a few nuggets of gold. But what nuggets! It has to be admitted that this edition doesn't just give you the gold. It ends with øAuntie ToothacheÓ, a story with the perilous opening: øWhere did we get this story? ... We got it from the rubbish bin.Ó
But the edition has the original illustrations by Vilhelm Pedersen and Lorenz Frolich, with their rather matronly Victorian mermaid. It's a scholar's edition rather than a child's book, in spite of the shiny red cover, but it would be welcome under many a Christmas tree.