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"The Little Match Girl" (Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne) is a Danish fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young girl who dies selling matches during the cold winter. It was first published in 1848 as part of his fifth volume of Nye Eventyr (New Fairy Tales) as "Den Lille Pige Med Svovlstikkerne" ("The Little Girl with the Sulfursticks").

Contents 1 Plot synopsis 2 Adaptations 3 Popularity 4 External links

It was night on New Year’s Eve, and a poor, little match girl was out on the streets selling matches. Although she was cold and hungry, with neither hat nor shoes, she was afraid to go home as her father would surely beat her when he found out she did not sell any matches that day (though some versions of the story state that the girl is an orphan).

In a nook between two buildings, she wanted to warm herself by lighting matches. In the light of the first match she saw a hot iron stove, but the fire was soon blown out by the howling wind. She lit a second match and saw a fully laden dinner table with delicious foods and a roasted goose that came slowly toward her. It too disappeared as the match went out. By the light of the third match she saw a beautiful Christmas tree lit with a million candles. The candle lights went higher and higher until they became stars. One became a shooting star and she remembered her late grandmother telling her that a shooting star means a person has passed away and gone to Heaven.

Upon lighting the fourth match she saw her smiling grandmother, the only person who ever loved her (her mother in some versions). This filled her with so much joy she quickly lit the next match and the next so that her grandmother would never fade. Finally, the grandmother took the happy girl in her arms and they flew higher and higher to a place where there's no cold, no hunger, no fear.

The next morning, the little girl was found dead in the snow with a smile upon her lips. “She wanted to warm herself!” people exclaimed as they noticed the burned out matches littered around her body. However, no one knew what beauty she had seen or with what glory she had gone with her grandmother into a joyous new year.

It is a very touching story and it is usually read to children during Christmas.

In 1928, "La Petite Marchande d'Allumettes" ("The Little Match Girl") by Jean Renoir was released (40-minute silent film).

The Charles Mintz studio adapted "The Little Match Girl", including its grim ending, into a 1937 Color Rhapsodies animated short film, considered among the studio's best films. It was nominated for the 1937 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), losing to Disney's The Old Mill.

In 1971, Toei Animation released an animated film based on Andersen's works, entitled "Hans Christian Andersen no Sekai" ("The World of Hans Christian Andersen"). The final act of the film includes a faithful version of this story.

In 1974, a contemporarized version set in Cincinnati was aired on WLWT there. It featured a nine-year-old named Sarah Parker in the role of the title character.

In 1985, the film The Little Match Girl was released, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with Keshia Knight-Pulliam, William Daniels, and John Rhys Davies. Presented as a Christmas story, it tells of a young homeless orphan who brings the gift of love and reconciliation and helps a family reunite. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the original fairy tale, except for sharing the same name.

In 1987 British TV released "The Little Match Girl" a musical based on the original story. The cast included Twiggy and Roger Daltrey. This movie has since then become a collectors item selling on Ebay for around $100.

In 1996, Hogfather, one of Terry Prachett's popular Discworld series of novels, parodied the story. It mocks the idea that the story of the "Little Match Girl" exists as a tragedy to make its audience feel comparatively better, pointing out that the divine help only came after her death. Death himself (who for complicated reasons is doing the Hogfather’s job) is so incensed by this that he gives the little girl the gift of life as a Hogswatch present, and throws snowballs at the angels when they turn up.

In Neil Gaiman's award winning 2004 novella, "A Study in Emerald," the main characters view a set of three plays, one of which is a stage adaptation of the "Little Match Girl" as a flower seller (see "La Vendedora de rosas" for a similar adaptation, below). (The others are an adaptation of Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys and a tale of the coming of the Great Old Ones who rule the world of "Study"). Notably, this adaptation contains no instance of divine intervention (the grandmother who discovers the girl is only a mortal woman), perhaps as a means of increasing the sense of hopelessness/secularism instilled by the oppressive, fiendish regime.

La Vendedora de rosas (lit: "The Rose Seller") was a modern adaptation of Andersen's fairy tale in a very realistic, almost documentary form, a 1998 film directed by Víctor Gaviria, with Leidy Tabares. Thirteen-year-old Monica makes her living by selling flowers in the streets of Medellín, Colombia.

Suikoden III, a video game for the Playstation 2, contains a highly-abridged play version of "The Little Match Girl". In the game, the player can cast characters in different roles and have them perform a shortened version of the story.

In 2001 the Hungarian band Tormentor wrote the song "The Little Match Girl," with lyrics based on the story.

In 2002 Moppi Productions released the demo "Halla" which was heavily influenced by "The Little Match Girl".

In 2002 GrooveLily released Striking 12, a musical based on "The Little Match Girl".

The story was also used as a basis for the band GrooveLily's 2004 off-Broadway musical Striking 12

In 2003, "The Little Match Girl" was adapted into a short story manga by Hans Tseng and was featured in the first volume of Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga.

"Resurrection of the Little Match Girl" is a 2003 Korean movie, by which the L.M.G. abbreviation of Light machine gun is somehow relevant.

Also in 2003, "The Little Match Girl" was made into an animated short film by Junho Chung for Fine Cut: KCET's Festival of Student Film. Chung's daughter served as the model for the little match girl.

In 2005, an adaptation of "The Little Match Girl" was released by ADV Films in Hello Kitty Animation Theater Vol. 3 (a DVD that presents various Sanrio characters starring in classic children's stories). This version was faithful to the original ending (causing some minor concern about the death of the popular Hello Kitty character who played the little match girl).

In 2006, Walt Disney Feature Animation finished production work on a new adaptation of "The Little Match Girl". The short was originally intended to be a part of a Fantasia film, but this project was canceled. The Little Matchgirl is last of the four shorts from the aborted compilation to be developed as a standalone film. It combines hand-drawn animation, computer techniques, and stylized backgrounds, and retains Andersen's tragic ending. This short was subsequently released as a special feature on the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid. Directed by Roger Allers and produced by Don Hahn, it was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Animated Short Film in the 2006 season.

The German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann has written an opera based on the story called Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern.

In 2005, Erasure made a music video of their song "Breathe", based on a modern adaptation of the story.

Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish released an album called Wishmaster. The song "Bare Grace Misery", in keeping with the fantasy-oriented lyrics of the album, contains the line "A Little Match Girl freezing in the snow"

The Little Match Girl has been cited as one of the top 43 fairy tales of all time according to Rock Canyon University.

• "SurLaLune's The Annotated Little Matchgirl"
• Hans Christian Andersen: The Little Match-Seller. The Little Match-Seller by Hans Christian Andersen (1848). Retrieved on April 21, 2005.
• "The Little Matchgirl" Creative Commons audiobook
• "The Little Match Girl 1902 Adaptation (downloadable)" at The British Film Institute Released as part of the Creative Archive
• Dramatic reading of "The Little Match Girl" with full text and notes (Downloadable mp3 and streaming audio)
• Sheddling Light on the Little Matchgirl traces the path director Roger Allers and the Disney Studio took in adapting the Hans Christian Andersen story to animation.