Once Upon a Time: Fairy Tales from Around the World

Fairy tales are short, fantastical stories of folklore that were told orally for hundreds of years before being recorded. As works of folklore, fairy tales do not usually have a single author but rather are attributed to the groups of people from which the stories are believed to originate. A fairy tale typically begins with […]

Hans Christian Andersen Presentation Copy from the Library of Carl Sandburg (839.83 An2Eb)

While checking the recently-cataloged Hans Christian Andersen book inscribed to Mary Bruun against the special collections provenance file, a second book inscribed by Hans Christian Andersen was identified.  This copy of The Sand-hills of Jutland has just as interesting a provenance as the last book. As soon as you open the book, a University of […]

Hans Christian Andersen’s Presentation Copy to a Young Neighbor (IUA15161)

The Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) gained international fame for his fairy tales.  In fact, at the time of this blog posting, Edward Erikson’s famed statue of the Little Mermaid, which is permanently located in Copenhagen Harbor, is on display in Shanghai, China for EXPO 2010.  It is timely that the Rare Book & […]