Writing amid travel and castle life
In the autumn of 1845, Hans Christian Andersen left Copenhagen on a journey south. He wrote “The Little Match Girl” during a stop at Gråsten Castle, where the Duke of Augustenborg and his family were then staying. In the English translation of his autobiography published in 1847, Andersen recalled his warm reception, the surrounding woods, bay, and autumn mist, and the short fairy tale he wrote there.
References: [1]
A picture first, then two days of recorded work
Drawing on Andersen's later account of his writing, Flemming Hovmann's commentary explains that the woodcut publisher A. C. F. Flinch sent him three printed pictures and invited him to choose one as the basis for a story. He selected J. Th. Lundbye's image of a girl holding out a bundle of matches, which had previously accompanied a short moral tale. The image supplied the character and object; Andersen created their circumstances and the girl's inner world.
Almanac entries made closer to the time preserve specific actions. On November 18, 1845, Andersen noted a walk, writing the story of the girl with matches, and receiving a letter from Flinch. On November 19, he recorded making a fair copy of the tale and sending it with a letter to Mrs. Drewsen. These two entries document the particular stages of writing, copying, and dispatch.
An 1845 debut in an almanac dated 1846
The work first appeared in Dansk Folkekalender for 1846, edited by Frederik Frølund. Hovmann's commentary explicitly distinguishes the year in the title from the actual release: the almanac had already been published in December 1845. The first printing included Lundbye's picture, made into a woodcut by H. C. Henneberg. The illustration was both the starting point of the commission and part of the printed form in which readers first encountered the tale.
The story was subsequently included in the second collection of volume two of Nye Eventyr, or New Fairy Tales. Birger Frank Nielsen's research bibliography dates that collection's release to March 4, 1848, from Copenhagen publisher C. A. Reitzel. Its contents list the tale as beginning on page 29, in the same volume as “The Old House,” “The Drop of Water,” and “The Story of a Mother.” The year 1848 therefore refers to republication in a collection, not the work's first appearance.
Cold and visions in a very short tale
The story takes place on the last night of the old year. The girl has sold no matches all day and walks barefoot through the streets after losing her slippers. Lights in the houses and the smell of roast goose contrast with her hunger and cold. She dares not go home, both because she fears a beating from her father and because she knows the house is just as drafty. Instead, she curls up between two houses and strikes her matches one by one.
A stove, food, and a Christmas tree appear successively in the light, then vanish as the matches go out. Finally she sees her dead grandmother and lights the whole bundle to keep her there. The narrative describes them freed from cold and fear in God's presence, then returns to New Year's morning to confirm that the girl has frozen to death. Passers-by say only that she wanted to warm herself, unaware of what she experienced.
No wealthy person arrives in the real world to rescue her in time, and the girl is never given a name. Her visions cannot erase her death; they give readers access to an inner experience unavailable to the bystanders. The structure advances through brief flashes of light and repeatedly returns to the cold wall, connecting material deprivation with a longing for familial affection in very little space.
References: [4]
An English periodical documents circulation in 1847
Volume 21 of Bentley's Miscellany in 1847 printed the complete story in a translation credited to Charles Beckwith, under the title “The Little Match-Girl: A Christmas Story,” on pages 105–106. The original periodical explicitly named both author and translator, documenting an early stage in the work's entry into English-language reading. Moving from a Danish almanac to a British general literary periodical placed it in a different setting of publication and readership.
Although the translation's title emphasized Christmas, its narrative still took place on the last night of the old year and New Year's morning. It retained the possibility of a beating from the father, the drafty home, and the grandmother taking the girl up to God, preserving both the social predicament and the religious ending.
References: [5]
Showing readers a life unseen by passers-by
In an article in Anderseniana in 2005, Kristian Blum placed the tale alongside Gogol's “The Overcoat” to discuss the relationship between external poverty and a character's inner world. Blum particularly noted how Andersen allows the narrator to enter the girl's feelings, giving readers an understanding denied to the passers-by.
The girl's fate in the real world remains unchanged, but the narrative makes her more than an uncomprehended body on a street corner. From a commission based on a picture and a first printing in an almanac to an English periodical and a Danish collection, these publication records trace the work's early passage across languages.