Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen was a master fairytale teller. Hans Christian Andersen was born in the slums of Odense, a port city of Denmark on 2 April 1804. His father was a cobbler and his mother worked as a washerwoman. Andersen received very little education, but his fascination with fairy tales inspired him to compose his own stories and arrange puppet shows on a theatre his father taught him to build and manage. However, Andersen did not have a happy childhood.

When he was 17, Chancellor Jonas Collin, a director as the Royal Theatre, discovered Andersen. Collin procured money from the king for Andersen’s education. In 1828, Andersen passed the entrance examinations to the University of Copenhagen. In 1835, Andersen published Fairy Tales for Children, which contained four short stories. He eventually wrote 168 fairy tales. Among Andersen’s best-known fairy tales are The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, The Tinderbox, Little Claus and Big Claus, Princess and the Pea, The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, The Nightingale, The Story of a Mother and The Swineherd.

Hans Andersen died on 4 August, 1875. Denmark’s people always celebrate his birthday with a party called “Odin Story Day”. The Andersen home in Odin is now a museum, and thousands of people visit it every year.