E. Bredsdorff, 90; Hans C. Andersen Biographer

Elias Bredsdorff, a biographer who sought to take Hans Christian Andersen out of the nursery and present him as a serious adult writer, has died. He was 90.

Bredsdorff died Aug. 8 at his home in Copenhagen. The cause of death was not announced.

He was the author of what is considered a landmark biography of Andersen, his 1975 “Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of His Life and Work,” which sought to establish the 19th century writer, known primarily for his fairy tales, as a serious literary figure.

“Bredsdorff presented how full of conflicts [Andersen] was and that he also had dark sides in his life and works,” said professor Klaus P. Mortensen, a leading expert on Andersen.

Andersen, the son of a shoemaker’s apprentice, wrote dozens of fairy tale classics before his death in 1875, including “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Little Mermaid.”

For Danes, Andersen was always thought to have as much appeal to adults as children--an attitude Bredsdorff sought to spread abroad.

“The British and Americans ... have pushed him into the nursery and locked the door on him,” Bredsdorff said in the biography’s preface.

Born in 1912, the youngest son of a high school headmaster, Bredsdorff got a degree in Danish and English languages from Copenhagen University in 1938.

During his student years, he was a communist and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. He broke with the Communist Party in 1939, when the Soviet Union invaded Denmark’s Nordic neighbor Finland.

During Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark in 1940-45, he worked for the resistance movement as publisher of illegal leaflets and as a fund-raiser.

After the war, Bredsdorff moved to England, where he was a professor in the Scandinavian department at Cambridge University until his retirement in 1979.

He moved back to Denmark and continued to publish books, including biographies on Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde and several Danish authors, and was a prominent figure in public debate through his articles in the newspaper Politiken.

Bredsdorff is survived by his wife, Anne-Lise Neckelman; two children; and three stepchildren.