There’s no single culprit–Andersen’s stories were changed by Victorian translators for tone and decency; they were spliced by publishers to fit with illustrations, and they went through so many shoddy interpretations that the originals were all but lost in translation. Some stories, like “The Princess and the Pea,” were even incorrectly attributed to other authors. (It was included in an 1843 Grimm brothers’ collection.) The Franks’ edition finally sets the stories straight, and a valuable opening essay clarifies the tale most often told wrong–Andersen’s own life story.
