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Hans Christian Andersen's childhood in Odense
‘My life will shed the best light on my work.’
Mit eget Eventyr uden Digtning
Hans Christian Andersen was born on 2 April 1805. He was the only son of Hans, a self-educated shoemaker and Anne Marie, an illiterate washerwoman. For most of his childhood he lived with his parents in their one-room home in Odense on the island of Funen. It was a place where old rural traditions survived.
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Drawing of Odense by J.H.T.
Hanck
Copyright Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen (Denmark) |
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Stage with ballerinas, papercut by Andersen
By kind permission of Odense City Museums, Denmark |
Andersen’s early years in Odense were to have an important effect on his writing. Here he gained his first taste of the stage when his father made him a toy theatre and took him, aged seven, to the town’s playhouse - the only one outside Copenhagen. When he visited Graabrødre (Greyfriars) Hospital, the old people’s asylum where his grandmother worked, he heard the folk tales which were to inspire his stories.
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