Andersen's Fairy Tales

The tales that made a Danish poet the most translated writer of his century: the emperor's new clothes, the swineherd, the snow queen, the fir tree, the little match girl, the red shoes, the shadow. Andersen wrote them to be read aloud, in the voice of someone talking to a child who is listening hard. There is little fairy-tale justice in them; the fir tree is burned, the match girl freezes on New Year's Eve, and the shadow ends by taking its master's place. Twenty-three plates of northern interiors, moonlit cities and fairy woods by painters including Krøyer and Friedrich, 1817 to 1908, hold the same quiet, uneasy light the tales are told in.