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Hans Christian Andersen, author of some of the world's most endearing fairy tales, was born in a slum in Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805. Brought up in poverty, he fled Odense at age fourteen for Copenhagen, where he hoped to win fame as an actor. Though largely unsuccessful in this endeavor, he found a patron in one of the directors of Copenhagen's Royal Theater, who raised money for him to attend school. Because of his lower social class, Andersen was treated as an outcast by his headmaster and many of his schoolmates, but he excelled enough at his studies to be accepted into the University of Copenhagen in 1828. Over the next decade, he produced a number of important literary works, among them the antislavery play, The Mulatto and the autobiographical works, The Improviser and Only a Fiddler. However, his work in the genre that would make him famous throughout the world began in 1835 with the publication of Tales, Told for Children. Drawing from folklore and his own substantial imagination, Andersen composed fairy tales such as ''The Tinderbox'' and ''The Princess and the Pea'' in the style of the spoken language, thus making them accessible to a wide audience. Additional collections over the next four decades produced such beloved children's stories as ''The Emperor's New Clothes,'' ''The Little Mermaid,'' ''The Ugly Duckling,'' and ''The Snow Queen.'' He eventually wrote more than 150 stories for children, and these tales have been translated into nearly 100 languages, making him one of the great figures of world literature. In 1955, on the sesquicentennial of Andersen's birth, King Frederick IX of Denmark honored his country's greatest author and poet.