Danes Sketched by Themselves, The

London: Richard Bentley, 1864. The moral of this story shows, Though knaves on women oft impose,
That men are sometimes quite as green, But hold their tongues themselves to screen"
(Hans Christian Andersen)

[ANDERSEN, Hans Christian]. BUSHBY, Mrs. Anne, editor and translator. The Danes Sketched by Themselves. A Series of Popular Stories by the Best Danish Authors. Translated by Mrs. Bushby. In Three Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1864.

First English edition of this collection of Danish tales and verse, selected and translated by Mrs. Bushby.

Three octavo volumes (7 7/8 x 4 15/16 inches; 200 x 125 mm.). [2, publisher's advertisements], [6], 312; [4], 303, [1, blank]; [4], 303, [1, blank] pp.

Original terra cotta pebble-grain cloth with covers decoratively stamped in blind and spines ruled, decoratively stamped, and lettered in gilt. Original cream-colored endpapers. Some very faint marks on the front covers, where there must once have been library labels, the absolute minimum of rubbing to corners, some minor foxing to top edge.
A truly spectacular copy.

OCLC records just ten copies in libraries and institutions worldwide.

Includes stories and poems by Hans Christian Andersen ("Morten Langè. A Christmas Story" - volume I, pp. 199-208, and "The Man from Paradise. A Comic Tale" - volume I, pp. 305-312); Carl Bernhard ("Cousin Carl," "Aunt Francisca," "Damon and Pythas," and "The Bankrupt"); Bernard Severin Ingemann ("The Doomed House," "The Secret Witness," "All Souls' Day," "The Aged Rabbi. A Jewish Tale," and "The Death Ship"); Carit Etlar ("Too Old," "The Shipwrecked Mariner's Treasure," and "Twice Sacrificed"); H.P. Holst ("Lisette's Castles in the Air"), Adam Oehlenschlager ("Death and His Victims"), and others.

"Mrs Bushby is in many ways an interesting translator, who did not see Andersen as simply a children's writer, and that some of her divergences from Andersen's text are not mistakes but deliberate adaptations for the benefit of her audience in Victorian Britain...Mrs Anne S. Bushby (died 1875) knew Andersen personally, had indeed courted his acquaintance since his first visit to London in 1847, when her husband called upon him to invite him to dinner (Bredsdorff 1954: 314)" (Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen, Anne Bushby, Translator of Hans Christian Andersen, 2004).

"Most of the following stories have appeared, from time to time, in the ‘New Monthly Magazine,' and a few in other periodicals. They are now gathered together, and it is hoped that they may convey a favourable impression of the lighter literature of Denmark,—a country rich in genius, science, and art" (Prefatory note).

Not in Sadleir or Wolff.