‎"[ANDERSEN, H.C.]. A...‎
‎Ved min Velgører Provst Gutfelds Død. [In: Den Vest-Siællandske Avis eller Slagelse Ugeblad for uden- og inden-landske Historie og Dagens vigtigste Nyheder. Redigeret af Pastor og Ridder Bastholm, Trykt og Forlagt af Peter Magnus. No. 9, 9de Aarg. Løv... - [ANDERSEN'S THIRD PUBLICATION - EXTREMELY RARE]‎

‎Slagelse, 1823. 4to. Contemporary turquoise cardboard binding with contemporary handwritten title to spine. The poem is found on column 145. All the issues are numbered continuously throughout: 1676 columns (i.e. 838 pp.). All issues with the same contemporary owner's signature to top of first leaf: ""Neergaard"". An excellent copy.‎

Reference : 63463

‎The extremely rare first printing of the 1823-issues of this slightly obscure newspaper, which contains Hans Christian Andersen's third publication. This exceedingly rare piece of Anderseniana was published, when the master of the fairy tale genre was merely 17 years old, namely in February 1823. Hans Christian Andersen constitutes the greatest Danish author ever to have lived, arguably the greatest author of children's literature in the world, the founder of the fairy tale-genre and one of the most famous authors of all time. He almost singlehandedly put Denmark on the literary world map and gave to mankind a completely new way of writing and viewing the world. However, his road to fame was not straightforward and presumably, no one who made the acquaintance of the awkward and poor teenage Hans Christian Andersen would have predicted the role he came to play in the development of world literature. The present publication constitutes one of the two pieces of publication that are at the epicentre of the coming-to-be of the greatest poet and author to emerge from Danish soil. This little piece is a heartfelt, almost perfectly stylized poem that constitutes an obituary of Hans Christian Andersen's early benefactor, provost Gutfeld (1761-1823), who was responsible for Collin accepting to be Andersen's benefactor. It was due to Gutfeld and his belief in Andersen that he made it on into the world and was taken seriously enough – at the mere age of 17 – to later be allowed to follow his heart and his life dream – that of writing. ""As a poor child in the small but self-satisfied provincial centre of Odense, Andersen received throughout the first 14 years of his life impressions and experiences that were to be decisive for his literary production. In the autobiography of his youth, ""Levnedsbogen"" (not published till 1926), Andersen emphasised that the way of life in Odense had preserved popular old customs and superstitions unknown in Copenhagen and therefore available to him as a colourful stimulus to his imagination. However, even more decisive were the disturbing social experiences from the lowest ranks of society and his own urge to cast off the trammels of poverty, break with his social inheritance and realise his potential in the only outlet the times provided, the world of art, an urge that became ever more dominant throughout his childhood [...] A decisive factor that determined the direction of Hans Christian Andersen's life and his fantastic flight to Copenhagen in 1819, with the social and literary rise that followed, is the fact that, as the only town outside the capital, Odense had a theatre. [...] He left home as a 14-year-old 4 September 1819, a few months after his confirmation, to seek his fortune at the theatre in Copenhagen. [...] During Andersen's first years in Copenhagen (1819-22), he fought desperately to gain a foothold in the theatre as a ballet-dancer, actor or singer. Finally, when none of these attempts succeeded, he tried his hand as a playwright"" this was also in vain, but resulted in the director's deciding to send him to school so that something proper might be made of him, and this experience was thus as decisive for his later life and work as the Odense years."" (The Biography of the Hans Christian Andersen Centre). It was here, in Copenhagen, during the early theatre years, after he'd been cast aside as an actor, cast aside as a dancer, and cast aside as a singer that he wrote his play ""Alfsol"", which he handed in to the theatre in order to have it accepted for performance. But that too was cast aside, with the explanation that the author lacked all forms of education and had clearly never learned to write properly. Dean Gutfeld, however, had gotten to know Andersen and saw the potential in the young boy. Therefore, Gutfeld had spoken well of the uneducated boy and asked the theatre director Collin to look mercifully at it. ""[A] well liked speaker, Dean Gutfeld was alive then and was the one person that spoke most warmly and enthusiastically about my tragedy, which had now been completed. He sent it with a recommendation to the theatre direction and I was floating between hope and fear."" (own translation from Danish in Andersen: Mit Eget Eventyr. Uden Digtning, edt. Topsøe-Jensen, 1942, p. 46). Collin still refused the play, but it was this act of Gutfeld's that made Collin take an interest in Andersen and made him take him under his wings – if any, THE decisive moment in Andesen's life. Collin arranged that, at the expenses of the King, Andersen was sent to Slagelse Latinskole to get proper training and education. In the fall of 1822, Andersen left Copenhagen to go to Slagelse. From then on and throughout the rest of his life, Collin was his benefactor in all aspects of his life. Andersen came to consider him the closest to a father that he had, Collin's home became Andersen's home, and Collin's children his siblings and closest friends throughout his life. But Collin wanted Andersen to study and to learn properly before writing more poetry: ""Collin had mildly and friendly mentioned to me that he wished that during my school years I would not write too many verses"" that became a case of consciousness for me, an outright sin. That first year, I wrote merely one poem – for Gutfeld, who had died. I owed him a lot and I loved the man. The poem was published, without my name, in Slagelse Avis, and this is how Reverend Bastholm came to know me. I lent him my ""Alfsol"" [i.e. Andersen's first publication that was refused by Collin, but which he himself had procured money to publish a few months earlier], he wrote me a friendly letter, in which he encouraged me to study and thus more and more educate my poetic inclination."" (own translation from Danish, in: Andersen: Levnetsbog, edt. Hans Brix, 1926, p. 84). ""Hans Christian was virtually ordered to refrain from writing poetry or engaging in competitions at school until he was certain of his studies in language, grammar, and spelling."" (Jean Hersholt, Catalogue of the Collection of Hans Chritsian Andersen). Thus, only the circumstance of his love for Gutfeld and the gratitude he felt to him for having changed his life by making Collin take him under his wings, made Andersen commit the ""sin"" of writing poetry during school – and thus we have the exceedingly scarce third Andersen-publication, in ""Slagelse Ugeblad"", by the 17-year-old budding writer, who was so eager to write, but who otherwise had to suppress his poetic urges to please his benefactor. The publication is extremely rare and we have never seen a copy of it for sale before. Neither are we aware of any copy on private hands, and we have been able to locate only two other copies on OCLC: one in Odense and one in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. As Andersen-publications go, this is one of the two rarest and one might not come across another in one's life-time. BFN: 6. Not in Hersholt.‎