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Title: Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Story Teller by Jackie Wullschlager ISBN: 0-226-91747-9 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: An Artist who was Larger than Life or Rational Analysis
Comment: No true artist is really ever content in the age in which they live. Artists naturally resist time, space and matter. Given that, living in Europe during the 1800s must have been tedious for a man of Hans Christian Andersen's (b. 1805, d. 1875), passion and vision. In Andersen's case, writing became his way of transcending matter, of becoming timeless and immortal.
Author Jackie Wullschlager writes a thoroughly researched biography of the quirky genius. While I loved this book, I gave it three stars because I completely disagree with her premise that Andersen was a "victim" of classism and elitism and that his work was inspired in opposition to this.
Andersen pushed gender, sexual, social and artistic boundries so effortlessly that I have to believe it was instinctive not contrived. Isn't it every artists' lament that they are misunderstood? And isn't it every biographer's urge to explain it for them? All artists share the very same yearnings, complications, misunderstandings, restlessness and even nuttiness that Andersen did.
Quite simply there is no answer as to what informs any of their work. It just is. Mortals like us have to accept their magic gracefully. I certainly wish Wullschlager had.
Rating: 5
Summary: J. Wullschlager's Hans Christian Andersen - our dear friend
Comment: A well-researched critical, yet sympathetic biography of the complex brilliance which was Hans Christian Andersen.
When you reach the pages describing his death, you feel like you have lost a dear friend. HCA was known for his children's fiction, but in fact, many of his works are for adults. This biography is particularly interesting as it gives some insight into his little known adult works, together with his character, and places his work in the cultural context in Europe in which it found itself.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good biography of a flawed subject
Comment: Although this is a highly readable, extremely informative biography, the death of my Hollywood-derived impressions of Hans Christian Anderson, as personified by Danny Kaye, was a tortured one.
As Wullschlager clearly illustrates, Anderson was not a very likeable character. Easily wounded and quick to take offense (even where it was unwarranted), strangely self-assured to the point of embarrassing those around him with his pomposity and silliness (if not himself), he seems to have been almost incapable of giving the same friendship that he demanded of others. Even so, Wullschlager succeeds in making him sympathetic. Rather than try to make excuses for his behavior, she just lays out the facts and presents him as he was. She is particularly effective when she associates events in Anderson's life with the fairy tales and repeating literary themes they inspired.
That Anderson was able to transform his inner demons into timeless, allegorical tales that are both touching and uplifting is remarkable. That he was able to do so after having overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles in his background and early education marks him for the genius he was-warts and all.
This is a very good biography of an unusual, but brilliant, story-teller.
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Title: The Fairy Tale of My Life by Hans Christian Andersen, Naomi Lewis ISBN: 0815411057 Publisher: Cooper Square Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen : A New Translation from the Danish by Jeffrey Frank, Diana Crone Frank, Lorenz Frolich, Vilhelm Pederson ISBN: 0618224564 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 06 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: The Amazing Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen by Beth Wagner Brust, Hans Christian Anderson ISBN: 0618311092 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 16 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories by Virginia Haviland, Hans Christian Andersen, Erik Christian Haugaard ISBN: 0385189516 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 09 August, 1983 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Classic Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen by Hans Christian Andersen, Christian Birmingham, Margaret Clark ISBN: 076241393X Publisher: Courage Books Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.98 |
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