Hans Christian Andersen celebrated with Google doodleGoogle celebrates the 205th anniversary of the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen's birth with a series of images telling the story of Thumbelina
Richard Lea
Richard Lea
guardian.co.uk
A fairytale twist has made the writer Hans Christian Andersen the subject of the latest Google doodle. The search giant is celebrating the Danish author's birth with a series of images on its homepage, telling the story of Thumbelina.
The latest addition to Google's literary honour roll shows an eclectic taste, and further evidence of the search engine's approximate attitude to anniversaries. The celebration of Andersen's 205th anniversary comes after HG Wells's 143rd and Confucius's 2,560th last year.
Born in the slums of Odense in 1805, Andersen spent the 1820s in Copenhagen half-starved, looking for work as an actor or playwright. A fantastical travel sketch in the style of ETA Hoffman, and a novel set in Italy launched his literary career, but it was the series of fairytales published after 1835 which set him on the path to fame.
Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who began publishing the folk tales they had collected in 1812, Andersen made up most of his stories from scratch. Alongside the trolls and the ice creatures of oral tradition Andersen placed soldiers returning from war, rocking horses and a Lutheran deacon, all evoked with a salty "low" Danish which still sounds fresh to this day.
Andersen quickly created a series of Romantic heroes, firm in their resolve to act upon the unpredictable world which surrounds them. His first collection of fairytales, published in May 1835, included "The Princess on the Pea" and "The Tinderbox". A second was published shortly afterwards, including "Thumbelina", and a third followed in 1837, with "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Little Mermaid".
His stories brought celebrity, a royal annuity and a circle of wealthy friends, but his restless travels and anguished renunciation of sexual relations suggest that the scars of his upbringing never healed. Two hundred and five years after his birth, the mystery of how he transformed his anxieties over class, fortune and unworthiness into the stuff of childhood dreams remains.
The latest addition to Google's literary honour roll shows an eclectic taste, and further evidence of the search engine's approximate attitude to anniversaries. The celebration of Andersen's 205th anniversary comes after HG Wells's 143rd and Confucius's 2,560th last year.
Born in the slums of Odense in 1805, Andersen spent the 1820s in Copenhagen half-starved, looking for work as an actor or playwright. A fantastical travel sketch in the style of ETA Hoffman, and a novel set in Italy launched his literary career, but it was the series of fairytales published after 1835 which set him on the path to fame.
Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who began publishing the folk tales they had collected in 1812, Andersen made up most of his stories from scratch. Alongside the trolls and the ice creatures of oral tradition Andersen placed soldiers returning from war, rocking horses and a Lutheran deacon, all evoked with a salty "low" Danish which still sounds fresh to this day.
Andersen quickly created a series of Romantic heroes, firm in their resolve to act upon the unpredictable world which surrounds them. His first collection of fairytales, published in May 1835, included "The Princess on the Pea" and "The Tinderbox". A second was published shortly afterwards, including "Thumbelina", and a third followed in 1837, with "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Little Mermaid".
His stories brought celebrity, a royal annuity and a circle of wealthy friends, but his restless travels and anguished renunciation of sexual relations suggest that the scars of his upbringing never healed. Two hundred and five years after his birth, the mystery of how he transformed his anxieties over class, fortune and unworthiness into the stuff of childhood dreams remains.
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