On your feet! H. C. Andersen's maiden trip into literary space

Already during his lifetime, H. C. Andersen was an international literary celebrity and a well-known author through the vast proliferation of his work. Through his travels, Andersen was able to cross and transgress spatial, temporal and social borders and expand his international social network far beyond his home country. While travelling Andersen became profoundly aware of the fact that he represented two fundamentally different modalities of travel, as he on the one hand embodied the quintessential nineteenth century bourgeois traveler, while he on the other hand, as part of his personal background, inescapably was connected to its opposite: the underlying social image of the tramp. This article takes a closer look at Hans Christian Andersen’s first book-length literary work, Fodreise fra Holmens Canal til Østpynten af Amager i Aarene 1828 og 1829 (1829), offering special attention to the meaning of the theme of travel – notably travel on foot – understanding Fodreise as a liminal work in the evolution of Andersen’s oeuvre.