安徒生给我们创造了一个个绮丽奇幻的童话世界，这个世界里的小动物、小植物、房子、锡兵、剪纸、天使、巫婆是那么美丽、动人、凄婉，个个都有灵魂，个个都有不平常的经历：夜莺优美的歌声可以制服死神，小人鱼能变成美丽的公主，丑小鸭原来是优美的白天鹅，野天鹅可以救自己的哥哥，娇气的公主可以感觉到铺着二十副床垫、二十床羽绒褥子下面有一颗硌人的豌豆……安徒生用幻想把它们写得活灵活现，栩栩如生，十分神奇。

安徒生的童话充满着诗意和幻想。鸟兽虫鱼、花草树木，整个大自然乃至家庭中的家具和玩偶等都被赋予了生命，注入了思想感情，生动活泼，引人入胜。大胆的幻想超越了时间和空间的界限，好奇的求知欲穿透了大自然的秘密，丑小鸭变成了优雅的天鹅，小人鱼为了爱变成了美丽的少女，夜莺奇妙的歌声制服了死神……这里是充满奇思妙想的国度，带你回到五彩缤纷的童年时光。

Introduction

Translator's Note

Select Bibliography

The Tinder-Box

Little Claus and Big Claus

The Princess and the Pea

Thumbelina

The Naughty Boy

The Travelling-Companion

The Little Mermaid

The Emperor's New Clothes

The Galoshes of Fortune

The Steadfast Tin-Soldier

The Wild Swans

The Flying Trunk

The Rose-Elf

The Swineherd

The Buckwheat

The Sweethearts

The Ugly Duckling

The Snow Queen --A Fairy-tale in Seven Parts

The Little Match-Girl

The Old House

The Goblin at the Provision-Dealer's

She Was Good for Nothing

The Wind Tells of Valdemar Daae and His Daughters

The Bishop of Borglum and His Kinsman

What the Thistle Lived to See

The Gardener and the Family

Heavens, how terrified poor Thumbelina was when the cockchafer flew up into the tree with her! BUt she was most sorry for the beautiful white butterfly she had tied fast to the leaf: if it could not free itself, it would certainly die of hunger. But the cockchafer cared nothing for that.He sat down with her on the largest green leaf in the tree, gave her honeydew from the flowers to eat, and told her she was very pretty, although she was not at all like a cockchafer. Then all the other cockchafers that lived in the tree came to visit her. They looked at Thumbelina,and the young lady cockchafers shrugged their feelers and said, 'But she's only two legs what a pitiful-looking thing she is!' 'She hasn't any feelers!' 'Her waist is so thin—pooh, she looks just like a human! How ugly she is!' said all the lady cockchafers--and yet Thnmbelina was really very pretty! And that's what the cockchafer who had carried her off thought, too, but when all the others said she was ugly, he believed so as well in the end, and would have nothing more to do with her--she could go wherever she would. They flew down from the tree with her and set her upon a daisy; there she wept because she was so ugly that the cockchafers would have nothing to do with her, and yet she was the loveliest little thing yon could imagine, as bright and dainty as the most beautiful of rose-petals.

The whole summer through, poor Thumbelina lived quitealone in the great forest. She plaited herself a bed ofgrasses and hung it under a large dock-leaf to keep therain off her; she gathered the pollen from the flowers toeat, and she drank the dew that formed every morningon the leaves. And so summer and autumn passed, andwinter came--a long, cold winter. All the birds that hadsung so beautifully for her flew away, the trees and theflowers withered, and the large dock-leaf she had lived under curled up and nothing was left of it but a shriveled yellow stalk. She was dreadfully cold, for her clothes were in tatters, and she herself was so delicate and small, poor Thumbelina, that she might have frozen to death. It began to snow, and every snow-flake that fell upon her felt as a whole shovelful might do if it were thrown at one of us, for we are big and she was only an inch tall. So she wrapped herself up in a withered leaf, but it did not warm her, and she shivered with cold.

Just beyond the edge of the forest which she had now come to, lay a great corn-field, but the corn had long since been carted, and now only the dry bare stubble stood up out of the frozen ground. But it was like a forest for her to go through, and oh, she shivered so much with the cold! And so she came to the field-mouse's door. It was a little hole under the stubble. There the field-mouse lived snug and comfortable with a whole store-room full of corn and a fine kitchen and dining-room. Poor Thumbelina stopped just inside the doorway like a wretched beggar-girl, and asked for a little bit of a grain of barley, for she had had nothing at all to eat for the last two days.

'You poor little thing!' said the field-mouse, for she was a good-natured old field-mouse at heart. 'Come into my warm room and have something to eat with me!'

She liked the look of Thumbelina, and so she said, 'You're welcome to stay with me for the winter, but you must keep my room nice and clean, and tell me stories, for I'm very fond of stories.' And Thumbelina did what the good old field-mouse asked of her, and lived very comfortably.

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Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales are known and loved by adults and children alike. The first volume containing four stories appeared in 1835,and by the end of his life he had published a total of 156 tales. Despite the author's declaration that he would have preferred to be known for his poems andnovels, it is for these imaginative tales that he is remembered.

Andersen was born in Odense in 1805, the son of a poor shoemaker and a simple peasant woman. His father died when he was 11 and at the age of 14 he set out to seek fame and fortune as an actor in Copenhagen. For three years he was helped by various patrons from scholars to the King himself,and at 17 he was sent to school as a State protege.Once he had passed his examinations he chose to write, becoming eventually, and after many hard-ships and humiliations, Denmark's most illustrious son, feted all over the world. His autobiography,which he began as early as 1832, was entitled The Fairytale of My Life. Hans Andersen died in 1875.

NAOMI LEWIS is a critic and writer, and expert on Hans Andersen's works. She has edited several volumes of children's stories including collections of fairy tales by Andersen and the brothers Grimm.Her books include A Peculiar Music (about the poems of Emily Bronte), Fantasy (for The National Book League)，A Footprint on the Air，The SilentPlaymate(an anthology of doll literature}，and thePuffin Hans Christian Andersen，a new translationof twelve stories with introduction and notes．Shereceived the Eleanor Farjeon Award for distinguishedservices to Children’S literature．

L．W．Kingsland is a retired headmaster and trans—lator of Scandinavian literature．