This tale shares elements with AT and AT Hop O' My Thumb. It comes from Africa although the specific African origin is unknown. It uses Motif K Buy the book in hardcover. This tale comes from Turkey.
Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales and Stories
A Treasury of Turkish Folktales for Children. A web version of this tale is available at Hazel-Nut Child. This tale is AT and comes from Bukovina in Europe. The Yellow Fairy Book. This tale is AT and comes from England. This is one of the earliest known versions of the tale in print. Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales. John Russell Smith, This comes from Russia.
Indiana Umversity Press, A web version of this tale is available at Little Chick-Pea. Houghton Mifflin Company, Buy the book in hardcover or paperback. Buy the book in hardcover and paperback. A web version of this tale is available at Little Lasse.
Thumbelina
The Lilac Fairy Book. Folktales of the World. University of Chicago Press, A web version of this tale is available at The Mouse and the Sun. This tale comes from Canada.
- Thumbelina In Modern English (Translated).
- Thumbelina - Wikisource, the free online library!
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- Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration (1899-1999) (MIT Press).
Compare it to Boy-Man. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Wayne State University Press, A web version of this tale is available at Pepper-Corn. It comes from Chile. La Gente de Ia Tierra. Editorial Andres Bello, Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografia. The Olive Fairy Book.
A web version of this tale is available at Thomas of the Thumb. A web version of this tale is available at Thumbikin. A web version of this tale is available at Thumbkin.
SearchWorks Catalog
European Folk and Fairy Tales. P Putnam's Sons, A web version of this tale is available at Thumbling. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. One Hundred Favorite Folktales. Indiana University Press, A web version of this tale is available at Thumbling's Travels. A web version of this tale is available at Tom Thumb England. Buy the book in deluxe hardcover, hardcover or paperback. Opie, Iona and Peter. A web version of this tale is available at The Annotated Thumbelina.
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The tale is known as "Tommelise" in Andersen's original Danish. In English translations, it is most often known as "Thumbelina" and "Inchelina" depending on the translation. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Erik Christian Haugaard, translator. Garden City, New York: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales.
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- Final Lap (Traces Book 5).
- Thumbelina DYUJMOVOCHKA English subtitled Russian animation with subtitles | Amara.
- The Tower Mill.
A web version of this tale is available at The Young Giant. Dathera Dad A web version of this tale does not exist due to copyright restrictions. An English language version is available in: Return to top of page Digit the Midget A web version of this tale does not exist due to copyright restrictions.
Return to top of page The Diminutive Flute Player A web version of this tale does not exist due to copyright restrictions. Return to top of page Doll in the Grass A web version of this tale is available at Doll in the Grass. Return to top of page Fereyel and Debbo Engal the Witch A web version of this tale does not exist due to copyright restrictions. Return to top of page. It originally appeared in: Return to top of page Dathera Dad A web version of this tale does not exist due to copyright restrictions.
The mouse suggests Thumbelina marry her neighbor, a mole, but Thumbelina finds repulsive the prospect of being married to such a creature because he spent all his days underground and never saw the sun or sky. The field mouse keeps pushing Thumbelina into the marriage, saying the mole is a good match for her, and does not listen to her protests. In Hans Christian Andersen's version of the story, a bluebird had been viewing Thumbelina's story since the beginning and had been in love with her since.
In the end, the bird is heartbroken once Thumbelina marries the flower-fairy prince, and flies off eventually arriving at a small house. There, he tells Thumbelina's story to a man who is implied to be Andersen himself and chronicles the story in a book. An only and a spoiled child, Andersen shared a love of literature with his father who read him The Arabian Nights and the fables of Jean de la Fontaine.
Together, they constructed panoramas, pop-up pictures, and toy theatres, and took long jaunts into the countryside. Andersen's father died in , and from then on, Andersen was left to his own devices. In order to escape his poor, illiterate mother, he promoted his artistic inclinations and courted the cultured middle class of Odense, singing and reciting in their drawing-rooms.
On 4 September , the fourteen-year-old Andersen left Odense for Copenhagen with the few savings he had acquired from his performances, a letter of reference to the ballerina Madame Schall, and youthful dreams and intentions of becoming a poet or an actor.
Fairy Tales and Stories
After three years of rejections and disappointments, he finally found a patron in Jonas Collin, the director of the Royal Theatre, who, believing in the boy's potential, secured funds from the king to send Andersen to a grammar school in Slagelse, a provincial town in west Zealand, with the expectation that the boy would continue his education at Copenhagen University at the appropriate time.
At Slagelse, Andersen fell under the tutelage of Simon Meisling, a short, stout, balding thirty-five-year-old classicist and translator of Virgil's Aeneid. Andersen was not the quickest student in the class and was given generous doses of Meisling's contempt. Meisling is believed to be the model for the learned mole in "Thumbelina". Fairy tale and folklorists Iona and Peter Opie have proposed the tale as a "distant tribute" to Andersen's confidante, Henriette Wulff, the small, frail, hunchbacked daughter of the Danish translator of Shakespeare who loved Andersen as Thumbelina loves the swallow; however, no written evidence exists to support the theory.
Andersen published two installments of his first collection of Fairy Tales Told for Children in , the first in May and the second in December. Reitzel on 16 December in Copenhagen. The story was republished in collected editions of Andersen's works in and The first reviews of the seven tales of did not appear until and the Danish critics were not enthusiastic. The critics offered Andersen no further encouragement. One literary journal never mentioned the tales at all while another advised Andersen not to waste his time writing fairy tales.
One critic stated that Andersen "lacked the usual form of that kind of poetry [ Andersen felt he was working against their preconceived notions of what a fairy tale should be, and returned to novel-writing, believing it was his true calling.
The critical reaction to the tales was so harsh that he waited an entire year before publishing " The Little Mermaid " and "The Emperor's New Clothes" in the third and final installment of Fairy Tales Told for Children.