Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales (Leather-bound Classics)

Absolutely perfect I can’t wait to read these fairytales to my son at bedtime. The cover is very nice and very eloquently decorated. I love the colors of the blues and pinks and green altogether. The outer pages are a beautiful gold with an iridescent accent. and there are so many fascinating stories. I can’t wait great addition for the price. Definitely recommend buying.

In excellent condition for a used book. Love the cover artwork and front page artwork. Includeds a introduction with a picture of Hans C. Andersen. Includeds a green book marker that is built into the binding. The pages are a nice thickness and have a nice gold trim. I will probably read the ugly ducking first as I am a big swan princess fan and for my second story I am undecided. I consider this very collectible and giftable.

This is a review of the kindle edition of Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales. I notice that most of the reviews for it are for the hardcover edition. Paper and print quality for this edition were not an issue. The version I had was free of any illustrations except for the cover art. I was reading an older speech or essay by Daisaku Ikeda in either the World Tribune or Living Buddhism a while back in which he referred to a story by Hans Christian Anderson called “The Silver Shilling.” It occurred to me then that not only had I never heard of this particular story before, but I had never read any of Hans Christian Anderson’s stories in their original format. By this, of course, I mean a good translation as they were originally written in Danish. This book has no mention of who the translator was. There are 127 stories in this collection of which I only know about ten or twelve, and not all of them very well. Even of the ones I thought I knew pretty well, some as they are presented here are so different from the frequent retellings you hear most often as to be almost unrecognizable. “The Red Shoes” for example is much different from the version you usually see. “The Fir Tree” is probably the story I know the best. It usually finds its way into Christmas anthologies because of the little fir tree’s experience one year as a Christmas tree. It is substantially the same as the story I know. The designation of fairy tales for these stories is surprising, as fairies are not mentioned in no more than three of them and elves in perhaps as many as five. Much more common are stories featuring birds, flowers, or inanimate objects who talk and act very much like people. In one case there is a bottle neck that has a surprisingly long story. There are also several life stories of pretty much average people; some of them live good lives and end by going to heaven and meeting someone they had lost. Others do not live so well and die very unhappy. There are three or four stories of boys and girls who played happily together as children but were later separated in one way or another. Some of these children were later reunited. Others drift away and never find each other again. Angels feature prominently in some of the stories. Almost all of the stories have a moral of some sort. There is also an unexpectedly large number of stories of the lives of prominent artists or writers, occasionally as viewed by the flowers or birds that lived in their yards. Most of these were Scandinavian artists so I didn’t recognize many of them. They almost invariably died young, however.

Beautiful book! I did not think the font was too small as others mentioned. I am excited to give this to my brother for his firstborn

Cantebury does it again with another beautiful book!!!

this edition of andersen's fairy tales is visually stunning and seems quite sturdy, with crisp pages and printing and a fun choice of colors on the binding. the text is indeed tiny, so along with how thin the pages are it feels like reading a bible. i like the idea of the images used for the end pages but the image quality as it's printed is atrocious, blurry and pixelated, similar to this publisher's leatherbound edition of grimm's fairytales but worse. for the text size and end pages i might have returned it, but it does contain more stories than i've seen in a collected works of andersen before. i wouldn't mind the book being a little bigger if they upped the text size, but i can live with this.

If you are only interested in simplified versions of the most well--known tales, then this is NOT the book for you. When it says, 'The Complete Hans Christian Anderson' it means that you are getting more stories than you may have ever imagine to be in one volume! And some tales are much much more voluminous than the common versions...but, that being said, if you are someone who enjoys great tales, and perhaps, for example, have read an entire version of Grimm's Fairy Tales, then this is the book for you It is not expensive for a book with a leather cover hard-backed cover, and which has way more stories than you might have ever imagined, many of them quite interesting but seldom seen in the shorter collections of tales. I highly recommend this book for anyone who really loves to read or reread folk tales from various countries. This volume will not disappoint you.

This is a very nice book that for sure will be added to our collection. The book arrived in excellent condition and was delivered just in time. Adequate packaging.

My father bought me Andersen children’s picture book when I was 4 years old. I always asked my mother to read me “Twelve by the mail” at that time. I love to read fairy tales and I’m so happy I can read “Twelve by the mail” now. It’s a so much pleasure to get Andersen’s complete fairy tales here on Amazon. This is highly recommended.

LOVE this book!! The cover looks and feel luxurious. There were 169 short stories inside.

I am happy with buy. Many stories i knew but so many more that i didn't. I find it cute that they have included the year the stories were written.

A superb edition, complete and true to the originals. The volume has an excellent tactile feel, solid binding, and decent paper. All the classic tales are included in one place, making it both practical and enjoyable to read.

Author needs no introduction. Best fairytales for young minds. A must have in your library.