Hans Christian Andersen or simply H.C. Andersen  (April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author and poet most famous for his fairy tales.

Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on Tuesday, April 2, 1805.Andersen's father apparently believed that he might be related to nobility, and according to scholars at the Hans Christian Andersen Center, his paternal grandmother told him that the family had once been in a higher social class. However, investigation proves these stories unfounded. The family apparently did have some connections to Danish royalty, but these were work-related. Nevertheless, the theory that Andersen was the illegitimate son of royalty persists in Denmark, bolstered by the fact that the Danish King took a personal interest in Andersen as a youth and paid for his education. The writer Rolf Dorset insists that not all options have been explored in determining Andersen's heritage.

Andersen displayed great intelligence and imagination as a young boy, a trait fostered by the indulgence of his parents and by the superstition of his mother. He made himself a small toy-theatre and sat at home making clothes for his puppets, and reading all the plays that he could lay his hands upon; among them were those of Ludvig Holberg and William Shakespeare. Throughout his childhood, he had a passionate love for literature. He was known to memorize entire plays by Shakespeare and to recite them using his wooden dolls as actors. He was also a great lover of the art of banter, and assisted in initiating a society of like minded banterers amongst his friends.

In 1816, his father died and the young boy had to start earning a living. He worked as an apprentice for both a weaver and a tailor, and later worked in a cigarette factory where his fellow workers humiliated him by betting on whether he was in fact a girl, pulling down his trousers to check. At the age of fourteen, Andersen moved to Copenhagen seeking employment as an actor in the theatre. He had a pleasant soprano voice and succeeded in being admitted to the Royal Danish Theatre. This career stopped short when his voice broke. A colleague at the theatre had referred to him as a poet, and Andersen took this very seriously and began to focus on writing.

Hans Christian Andersen in 1869

Following an accidental meeting, Jonas Collin started taking an interest in the odd boy and sent Andersen to the grammar school  in Slagelse, paying all his expenses. Before even being admitted to grammar-school, Andersen had already succeeded in publishing his first story, The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave in (1822). Though a backward (perhaps learning-disabled) and unwilling pupil, Andersen studied both in Slagelse and at a school  in Elsinore until 1827. He later stated that these years had been the darkest and most bitter parts of his life. He had experienced living in his schoolmaster's own home, being abused in order to "build his character", and he had been the odd man out among his fellow students, being much older than most of them, homely and unattractive. Furthermore, he was dyslexic, a very likely reason for his learning difficulties and he later said that the school faculty forbade or discouraged him to write .

The feeling of "being different", usually resulting in pain, is a recurrent motif in his work. This is both attributed to his early life in poverty, his homeliness and in particular to his lack of romantic and sexual life. His sexuality is somewhat controversial and covered in a section below.

In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell out of bed and severely hurt himself. He never quite recovered, but he lived until August 4, 1875, dying  very peacefully in a house called Rolighed (literally: calmness), near Copenhagen, which was given to him by his friend Moritz Melchior, a banker. Shortly before his death, he had consulted a composer about the music for his funeral, saying: 'Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps.' His body was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen. At the time of his death, he was an internationally renowned and treasured artist.

The year 2005 was the bicentenary of Andersen's birth and his life and work was celebrated around the world. The interest in Andersen's person, legacy and writing has never been greater. In Denmark, particularly, the nation's most famous son has been feted like no other literary figure. The Hans Christian Andersen Bicentenary Website is an excellent resource.