fairy tales] will be published in April, and people will say: the work of my immortality! Of course I shan't enjoy the experience in this world". Publication "The Tinderbox" is one of Andersen's first fairy tales. It was published in Copenhagen, Denmark by C. A. Reitzel on 8 May 1835 in an unbound 61-page booklet as the first installment of the first collection of Andersen's Fairy Tales Told for Children with "Little Claus and Big Claus", "The Princess and the Pea", and "Little Ida's Flowers". The booklet cost 24 shillings (the equivalent of 25 Dkr. or approximately US$5 in 2009) and the publisher paid Andersen 30 rixdollars (US$450 in 2009) for the manuscript. The booklet was republished in a second edition in 1842, and a third in 1845. "The Tinderbox" was reprinted in Fairy Tales, a five volume collected edition of Andersen’s fairy tales published between August and December 1849 with 125 drawings by Vilhelm Pedersen, Andersen's favorite illustrator. The tale was published again in the first volume of Fairy Tales and Stories on 15 December 1862. In his "Remarks" to the tales in the second volume of Fairy Tales and Stories in 1863, Andersen wrote, "The style should be such that one hears the narrator. Therefore, the language had to be similar to the spoken word; the stories are for children, but adults too should be able to listen in. The first three fairy tales are ones I heard during childhood, in the spinning room and during the harvesting of the hops; "Little Ida's Flowers" on the other hand, came into being one day while visiting the poet Thiele, when I was telling his daughter Ida about the flowers at the botanical gardens; I kept and adapted a few of the child's remarks when I later wrote the fairy-tale down." Danish critical responses, 1836 The first reviews of Andersen's tales appeared in 1836 and were unenthusiastic. Critics disliked the informal, chatty style of the tales and their lack of morals. The critic Carsten Hauch objected to the moral indifference of "The Tinderbox" but admired the delicate nobility of the Queen in "The Princess and the Pea". Andersen was offered no encouragement from the critics. One literary journal never mentioned the tales at all while another advised Andersen not to waste his time writing fairy tales. He was told he "lacked the usual form of that kind of poetry [...]and