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Andersen, Hans, Christian STORIES AND FAIRY TALES BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Translated by H. Oskar Sommer. London George Allen 1893

2 volumes. First edition with the illustrations by Gaskin. Illustrated with 200 fine engravings by Arthur J. Gaskin. 8vo, publisher's original green cloth pictorially decorated in black on the upper cover, lettered in gilt on the spine. xi,398; xii,426 pp. A very bright and unusually fine copy, fresh and clean but for some of the inevitable but only occasionally encountered foxing to prelims or edges.

SCARCE AND FINE SET. In the English-speaking world, the stories The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Princess and the Pea are cultural universals; everyone knows them, though few can name the author. They have become part of our common heritage, and, like the tales of Charles Perrault, are no longer distinguished from actual folk-tales such as those of the Brothers Grimm. Andersen himself was highly inspired by the Arabian Nights. A few of his stories such as The Wild Swans and The Rose-Elf are adaptations of older folktales (for example, The Wild Swans might be a retelling of The Six Swans as recorded by the Brothers Grimm.)
Andersen's work is often categorised as children's literature, though, he did not like to be stereotyped. The overall character of Andersen's stories is dark, sometimes even cruel, and redemption often comes at a high price. It is therefore a mistake - as it is with most literature for children - to think of his work as innocent. One of his famous stories, The Ugly Duckling, is a story that Andersen explained in his personal correspondence as a story that could be generalized broadly. In particular, he was writing the story as a tribute to those who like himself had (what were regarded at the time as) deviant sexual feelings. In that vein, Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland claim to have been inspired by Andersen's story of the Ugly Duckling in their controversial work King and King. Wikipedia

$US695

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