Born in Odense he is Denmark's most famous writer of novels, plays, travel books, and fairy tales. His fairy tales are among the most widely read works in world literature. His stories of make-believe have enchanted young readers around the world for generations. He wanted to be a seamstress (tailor), then an opera singer, wound up being supported by an older poet while he penned his tales, some of the earliest examples of high camp.

Andersen's sexual orientation is a matter of controversy in academic circles. The discussion began in 1901 with the article "Hans Christian Andersen: Evidence of his Homosexuality" by Carl Albert Hansen Fahlberg (using the pseudonym Albert Hansenin) in Magnus Hirschfeld's publication Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufe (Yearbook on Sexual Ambiguity). Biographies usually portray him as either homosexual or bisexual.

Andersen's love letters to men have been preserved and to a large extent published. The most important love of his life was undoubtedly Edward Collin, but although they remained close friends all their life, Andersen's fellings for Edward were not reciprocated. Andersen, who remained unmarried, possibly never experienced genital sex with anybody, man or woman.

His fairy tale The Little Mermaid (1837) was an existential and poetic reflection and clarification of his unrequited love for his close friend Edvard Collin, the son of his benefactor - "the impossible and fatal love of a little mermaid for a prince who never really sees her, except for her art, her dancing on the small feet that hurt as if she were treading on knives". (Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History) Some biographers think this story exemplifies Andersen's love for the young Edvard Collin, to whom he wrote: "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Collin, who did not prefer men, wrote in his own memoir: "I found myself unable to respond to this love, and this caused the author much suffering."

Andersen's infatuation with young men led to a number of sentimental friendships lasting several years, rather one-sided "love affairs", notably with Ludwig Muller, the Danish dancer Harald Scharff, theatre manager Robert Watt and Carl Alexander the young hereditary Grand-Duke of of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach . Four of his letters to Carl are edited in the anthology My Dear Boy by Rictor Norton. In Andersen's early life, his private journal records his refusal to have sexual relations and his release through masturbation.

Young Andersen was more than willing to play the role of "kept boy," but later in life he preferred the company of burly working-class men in Copenhagen. Even after his death in 1875, Andersen's reputation lived on. When writer Martin Kok was charged, in 1892, with seducing 17-year old Anders Andersen, Danish newspapers speculated that Kok himself had been corrupted as a young man by Hans Christian Andersen.