The True Story of My Life

Summary

The True Story of My Life is the autobiographical sketch Hans Christian Andersen wrote in 1846, at forty-one, for a collected edition of his works. He opens by calling his life a lovely story, happy and full of incident, and says it shows that a loving God directs all things for the best. Born in Odense on the island of Funen in 1805, he grows up in one small room with his father, a young shoemaker who reads him the Arabian Nights and makes him toy theatres, and his mother, who goes out washing. His grandmother tends the garden of the town hospital and asylum, where the boy hears old women's stories and is terrified by a raving patient who reaches for him through a cell door. His father enlists as a soldier in the Napoleonic wars, returns broken in health, falls into a delirium about Napoleon and dies, and the boy is left to his puppet theatre, his songs and his dreams. Told by a fortune-teller that Odense will one day be illuminated in his honour, he persuades his mother to let him go to Copenhagen, and arrives on 5 September 1819 with a bundle and a few coins. He knocks on the door of a ballet dancer, is laughed at by the theatre, later stands among the ballet figurantes, and is helped by the singer Siboni, the composer Weyse and the poet Guldberg, who arrange lessons and small sums. After his voice breaks and the theatre dismisses him, the director Jonas Collin obtains a royal grant and sends him, at seventeen, to the grammar school at Slagelse and later Helsingør, where a severe rector mocks his poem The Dying Child and he passes the darkest time of his life. Released by Collin, he studies privately, becomes a student in 1828, and wins notice with comic and lyrical works while suffering from harsh Danish critics. A travel grant takes him in 1833 to Paris, Switzerland and Italy, which inspire his novel The Improvisatore (1835); in the same year he publishes his first small book of fairy tales, followed by others each Christmas. He describes his novels Only a Fiddler and O. T., his play The Mulatto, a journey to Greece and Constantinople told in A Poet's Bazaar, friendships with Thorvaldsen, Oehlenschläger and Ingemann, and the singer Jenny Lind, whom he admires deeply. The last chapters recount honours from the Danish and German courts and visits to Mendelssohn, Schumann, the Grimms, Liszt and Humboldt, and end at Vernet in the Pyrenees in July 1846 with thanks to God and men. The sketch first appeared in German in 1847, and Mary Howitt's English translation, dedicated to Jenny Lind, was published the same year; the prophecy about Odense came true when the town was illuminated for him in 1867.

Top Lessons

• Hardship on the road to a dream

  At fourteen Andersen tells his mother that famous people first go through much adversity, then become famous. In Copenhagen he is laughed at, dismissed by the theatre and nearly penniless, and at school he is mocked by his rector. He keeps working and trusting, and his story shows that early failures need not decide the end.

• Gratitude to helpers

  Andersen names the people who helped him: Siboni, Weyse, Guldberg, Collin and the king. He calls Collin a father and says that from the prince to the poorest peasant he has met noble hearts. Students see that even a self-made life depends on the kindness of others.

• Seeing life as a story guided by God

  Andersen begins and ends by saying that his life is a fairy tale directed by a loving God. He sees good coming even from sorrow, such as his father's death and his years at school. His faith shapes how he tells every chapter.

• Criticism and humility

  Andersen admits he is hurt by critics and pleased by praise, and wonders at the end whether telling of his honours is vanity. He hopes his heart has been both affected and humble. The book lets students think about how to receive praise and criticism honestly.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Andersen's childhood memories give an unusual child's-eye view of an early nineteenth-century Danish provincial asylum. His grandmother tended the garden of the Odense hospital, where harmless patients walked the court and the boy followed attendants to the cells of the raving; he remembers a nearly naked woman singing beautifully who sprang at the door and reached for him, a terror that stayed with him. He calls his grandfather weak-minded, a wandering carver of strange wooden figures mocked by street boys, and says he hid in fear because he knew he was of his flesh and blood, a period anxiety about hereditary madness that biographers have often noted. His father, returning from soldiering with broken health, falls into a delirium about Napoleon; his mother sends not for a physician but for a wise woman who measures the boy's arm with woollen thread and lays a twig on his breast, and the father dies days later. The book also records childhood measles, the spinning-women's belief that a child who knows too much will not live long, and the deep distress of his school years, which he says nearly overwhelmed him. Andersen's lifelong nervous fears and hypochondria are documented in his diaries rather than here, and modern psychological readings of his temperament remain interpretive.

• Chapter I

  The asylum garden, the harmless patients in the court, and the raving woman who reaches for the boy through her cell door.

• Chapter I

  His weak-minded grandfather carving fantastic figures and the boy's fear of sharing his blood.

• Chapter I

  His father's delirium about Napoleon, the visit to a wise woman instead of a physician, and the father's death.

• Chapter I

  Sick with measles, he watches his father leave for war and hears his grandmother say it would be good if he died.

• Chapter III

  The harsh rector at Slagelse and Helsingør and the misery that brings him near to sinking.