A new selection of 30 tales to mark the 200 year anniversary of Andersen&s birth in 2005 Tiina Nunnally&s sparkling translation captures the rawness & immediacy of Andersen&s style for the first time enabling English readers to be as startled & amazed as his original readers were & revealing the unique inventiveness of Andersen&s genius At a time when children&s stories were formal moral & didactic Hans Christian Andersen revolutionized the genre giving an anarchic twist to traditional folklore & creating a huge number of utterly original stories that sprang directly from his imagination From the exuberant early stories such as & The Emperor&s New Clothes& though poignant masterpieces such as & The Little Mermaid& & & The Ugly Duckling& to the darker more subversive later tales written for adults the stories included here are endlessly experimental both humorous & irreverent sorrowful & strange This book
- beautifully illustrated with a selection of Andersen&s amazing paper cut-outs
- will bring these magical tales to life for readers of any age