The Obsessions of Hans Christian Andersen

It was 1857 and the last thing Charles Dickens and his family (who were in a state of upheaval) needed was a houseguest. They especially didn’t need a neurotic, self-absorbed and tactless houseguest like the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, who decided to stay for an excruciating five weeks. Andersen was suffocatingly obsessive about the people in his life, a trait that he’d had since his troubled childhood and bleak adolescence. Heidi and Becki look at the loves and friendships that caused both inspiration and heartbreak for the eccentric storyteller and the twisted fairytale that was his life.