Project Gutenberg's Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen

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Title: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales
First Series

Author: Hans Christian Andersen

Editor: J.H. Stickney

Illustrator: Edna F. Hart

Release Date: May 28, 2010 [EBook #32571]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales

First Series

_Edited by_ J. H. Stickney

Illustrated by Edna F. Hart

Ginn and Company
Boston--New York--Chicago--London

COPYRIGHT, 1886, 1914, BY J. H. STICKNEY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

914.10

The Athenaeum Press

GINN AND COMPANY . PROPRIETORS
. BOSTON . U.S.A.

PREFACE

The Hans Andersen Fairy Tales will be read in schools and homes as long
as there are children who love to read. As a story-teller for children
the author has no rival in power to enlist the imagination and carry it
along natural, healthful lines. The power of his tales to charm and
elevate runs like a living thread through whatever he writes. In the two
books in which they are here presented they have met the tests and held
an undiminishing popularity among the best children's books. They are
recognized as standards, and as juvenile writings come to be more
carefully standardized, their place in permanent literature will grow
wider and more secure. A few children's authors will be ranked among the
Immortals, and Hans Andersen is one of them.

Denmark and Finland supplied the natural background for the quaint
fancies and growing genius of their gifted son, who was story-teller,
playwright, and poet in one. Love of nature, love of country,
fellow-feeling with life in everything, and a wonderful gift for
investing everything with life wrought together to produce in him a
character whose spell is in all his writings. "The Story of My Life" is
perhaps the