Excerpts and illustrations from the 1911 Hodder edition, illustrated by Edmund Dulac ( )

I shouldn't have read this as an audiobook - the illustration potential must be astounding.
Even still, it's a great story about love and the beauty of life. Having read about Anderson's personal life, it's interesting to see the incredible beauty he was able to see the everyday and the magic he was able to pull from thin-air. ( )

In 1911, the British publisher Hodder & Stoughton published an edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales, accompanied by twenty-eight gorgeous full-color illustrations by Edmund Dulac, a "Golden-Age" illustrator whose work has been compared to such artists as Arthur Rackham. This collection, published in 1976 by Doubleday, contains five of the original seven tales - The Garden of Paradise and The Real Princess (AKA The Princess and the Pea) have been omitted - and fifteen of the original twenty-eight plates. Readers looking for an edition more faithful to the original, should check out the recent facsimile printed by Calla Editions.

Here the reader will encounter faithful, albeit rather stiff and old-fashioned, translations of The Snow Queen (in all seven parts!), The Emperor's New Clothes, The Wind's Tale About Waldemar Daa and His Daughters (the first time I have seen this anthologized!), The Nightingale, and The Little Mermaid. No information as to translator is given, nor can I discover any online, which is rather frustrating.

Still, I imagine that most readers' primary interest in this volume will be the Dulac paintings, which are beautiful, despite the poor reproductions. The cover shows Gerda and the reindeer kissing, an image that attentive readers will recognize from The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (upper right-hand corner). I think my favorites, of the illustrations, were this one (of Gerda and the reindeer), the one of Waldemar Daa's youngest daughter, Anna Dorothea, gathering herbs, and the depiction of the Snow Queen hovering above the city. That said, I'm not sure I'd recommend this title, either to Andersen or Dulac fans, as the complete edition is available from Calla. Still, those who stumble across it will undoubtedly find much that appeals to them, in its pages. ( )