Best Fairy Tales

Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writer and storyteller who revolutionised literature for children. He gave us the now standard versions of some traditional fairy tales - with an anarchic twist - but many of his most famous tales sprang directly from his imagination. The thirty stories here range from exuberant early works such as ´The Tinderbox´ and ´The Emperor´s New Clothes´ through poignant masterpieces such as ´The Little Mermaid´, ´The Little Match Girl´ and ´The Ugly Duckling´, to more subversive later tales such as ´The Ice Maiden´ and ´The Dryad´. Uniquely inventive and vivacious in style and with deep insight into children´s points of view, Andersen established a new genre in literature. This is the classic translation by Jean Hersholt and is illustrated by various artists, with an afterword by Ned Halley.