Hans Christian Andersen wrote "The Ugly Duckling" about himself. Gangling, homely, with an enormous nose — a shoemaker's son from Odense who wanted to be a performer and arrived in Copenhagen without money or connections.
He was born in 1805. His father read aloud to him; his mother was superstitious and drank. At fourteen he set out for the capital and went knocking on the doors of theaters. He was placed in a school where he was considerably older than his classmates.
Poems, novels, plays — all of it middling. Then came the fairy tales. At first he retold folk stories; then he began inventing his own. "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Snow Queen," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" — tales of love, sacrifice, death, and loneliness, written as if for children and read by adults.
All his life he fell in love without return — with men and with women. He counted kings among his friends. He died in 1875, rich and alone.