Hans Christian Andersen, recognized as one of the masters of the fairy-tale genre, based much of his work on his own life. "Recollections of childhood and youth," wrote Reginald Spink in Hans Christian Andersen and His World, "sometimes idealized and transmuted, often only thinly disguised as fiction, inform almost everything that he wrote. . . . They inspired the novels through which he first became internationally famous, his many plays and poems, and above all many of the celebrated fairy tales, those simple-seeming but many-levelled stylistically sophisticated masterpieces, written, he insisted, for readers of all ages."

Like a character from one of his stories, Andersen followed his own dreams, fighting his way up from poverty to become one of the most famous and best-loved authors of all time. Or so the author liked to portray himself. "One of the difficulties in writing about Andersen as Denmark's most versatile and famous writer...