To Hans Christian Andersen might fitly be applied the title so happily bestowed by the natives of Samoa on Robert Louis Stevenson: Tusitala, the ”Teller of Tales.” For more than half a century the great Danish story - teller has been beloved by children in all parts of the world, and nowhere has he more devoted admirers than in Great Britain and those lands where English is the common tongue. As has been well said, ”Andersen was a Norseman, and the blood of Norsemen is in our veins.”
This book has been chiefly designed for younger children, only those stories have been included which are most suitable for the purpose.
For those who here make first acquaintance with Andersen, it may be well to state that he was born at Odense, in the Baltic island of Funen, on April 2, 1805. His first fairy tales were published when he was about thirty years of age. ”I have written them,” he wrote to a friend, ”just as if I were telling them to a child.” That, no doubt, was the reason of his success. though as a matter of fact the stories were not at first at all highly regarded. Popularity came later, and he died, greatly honored, at his country house near Copenhagen on August 4, 1875.
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