Profiles in Achievement

Determined to Succeed
A Fairy Tale Favorite

The son of a shoemaker and washerwoman, Hans Christian Andersen is the first Scandinavian writer from the working class. His small one-room house in Odense was both the family’s home and the father’s workshop. Andersen was tall, had large features, few friends, and poor grades. He seemed to be hopelessly different from other people, and his classmates teased him. When his father died, Andersen stopped going to school altogether. Instead, he worked—in a cloth factory, a tobacco factory, as an apprentice to a shoemaker—until he turned fourteen and left Odense for Copenhagen.

He had only 13 rigsdaler—about five dollars at the time—and he was soon destitute. He was always writing, however, and submitted play after play to the Royal Theater. Though the Board of Directors did not accept any of his manuscripts, they recognized his talents. The theater arranged for him to continue his education, and Andersen struggled through six more years of school.

Critics and contemporaries disparaged “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “Thumbelina,” And his other works, all now classics. He was publicly criticized in literary periodicals as having “poor orthography” and “bad Danish.” His friend Charles Dickens once said “Hans Christian Andersen speaks no language but his own, and is suspected of not even knowing that.” Recent studies reveal that Andersen may have suffered from specific reading and writing disabilities. Only Edvard Collin, Andersen’s friend, editor, and mentor, understood. “He learned many things,” Collin said, “but he never learned to learn properly.”

Still, Andersen has written six novels, 2,000 poems, and 168 stories. Aside from Shakespeare, he is more widely read than any other author in the world. Scholars devote their lives to the study of his work. Teachers and parents dedicate hours to the reading and telling of his stories. And children of all ages live for an instant in his world, where an emperor can be made a fool, an ugly duckling a swan, and a life a fairy tale.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Andersen, www.dyslexiamylife.org/wb_who_els.htm, www.dyslexiamentor.com/famous/famousdyslexics_024.php

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