Hans Christian Andersen’s Final Fairy Tale Collection, Signed and Inscribed to a Romantic Interest

Hans Christian Andersen is best known for such classic fairy tales as The Ugly Duckling, The Red Shoes, and The Emperor’s New Clothes. In 1872, he published his final major collection, in English entitled New Adventures, or Nye Eventyr og Historier (New Fairy Tales and Stories), appearing just three years before his death in 1875; This shows Andersen at his most mature and philosophical, containing darker, symbolic tales such as The Shadow, The Red Shoes, The Story of a Mother, and The Bell, which move far beyond simple children’s fairy tales into moral, psychological, and existential territory—making an actual 1872 printing.

Book signed, Nye Eventyr og Historier, Tredie Raekke, Anden Samling [New Adventures and Stories, Third Series, Second Collection]. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1872. Hardcover bound later in quarter-leather with marbled boards, 5.25 x 6.75, 73 pages. Signed and inscribed on the half-title page in Danish by Andersen to his friends and benefactors, in full (translated): “Mrs. Balling and Miss Naeboe.”

Miss Naeboe likely refers to Louise Næboe, a young woman with whom Andersen became emotionally infatuated in the 1830s. Like several women in his life (including Riborg Voigt and Jenny Lind), Miss Næboe appears in his diaries and letters as part of his recurring pattern of intense but usually unreciprocated romantic attachment. These relationships often fed directly into the emotional core of his later, more psychologically complex fairy tales.