Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish writer and poet known today especially for his short stories and Fairy Tales . As a young man, he started writing the stories he heard as a child, slowly developing the characteristic dark humour and surprising twists and turns of his most famous works. The cultural impact of Andersen s Fairy Tales is truly incommensurable. This volume contains The Emperor s New Clothes, The Snow Queen and The Red Shoes, just to name a few of the 18 stories out of the hundreds he produced during his lifetime.