This delightful selection of stories by one of the classic masters of the genre includes some well-known and lesser known tales, presented in lively Naxos AudioBooks style with music and sound effects.

This recording is also unique in that the stories are read by the finalists in the Naxos AudioBooks/ The Times Voice of the Year competition which offered a recording opportunity to talented readers who had never studied or worked professionally. The competition produced some outstanding natural talents as this recording shows!

Music: From the Naxos catalogue

Hans Christian Andersen 1805-1875

Hans Christian Andersen, one of the world’s greatest story-tellers, the most widely popular of Danish authors, was born April 2, 1805, in Odense in Funen. The son of a poor shoemaker, after his father’s death he worked in a factory, but his wonderful singing soon procured him friends and patrons. He early displayed a talent for poetry. Hoping to obtain an engagement in the theatre, he found his way to Copenhagen, but was rejected for his lack of education. He next tried to become a singer, but soon found that his physical qualities were quite unfitted for the stage. Generous friends, however, helped him; and application having been made to the king, he was placed at an advanced school. Some of his poems, particularly The Dying Child, had already been favourably received, and he now became better known by his Walk to Amak, a literary satire in the form of a humorous narrative. In 1830 he published the first collected volume of his Poems, and in 1831 a second under the title of Fantasies and Sketches. A travelling pension, granted him by the king in 1833 bore fruit in his Travelling Sketches of a tour in the north of Germany; Agnes and the Merman, completed in Switzerland; and The Improvisatore, a series of scenes inspired by Rome and Naples. Soon afterwards he produced O.T. (1836), a novel containing vivid pictures of northern scenery and manners, and Only a Fiddler (1837). Many more works might be mentioned, but it is such fairy tales as, ‘The Tin Soldier,’ The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ ’The Tinder Box,’ and ‘The Goloshes of Fortune’ that have made him a household divinity throughout the nurseries of the civilised world. He died in Copenhagen 4^th August 1875.