The improvisatore

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman in Odense, Denmark. At fourteen he went alone to Copenhagen to become a singer or an actor, failed at both, and was saved by patrons who sent him to school. He wrote novels, plays and travel books, but his fame came from the tales he began publishing in 1835.

Stories like The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling, many drawn from his own sense of being an outsider, have been translated into more languages than almost any other books. His Fairy Tales are in the library. He once stayed so long as a guest in Charles Dickens's house that Dickens pinned a note to the mirror after he left.