The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl (Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne, meaning "The little girl with the matchsticks") is a short story by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a dying child's dreams and hope, and was first published in 1845. It has been adapted to various media including animated film, and a television musical.

Plot summary
On a cold New Year's Eve, a poor girl tries to sell matches in the street. She is freezing badly, but she is afraid to go home because her father will beat her for not selling any matches. She takes shelter in a nook and lights the matches to warm herself.

In their glow, she sees several lovely visions including a Christmas tree and a holiday feast. The girl looks skyward and sees a shooting star, then she remembers her dead grandmother saying that such a falling star means someone has died and is going to Heaven. As she lights the next match, she sees a vision of her grandmother, the only person to have treated her with love and kindness. She strikes one match after another to keep the vision of her grandmother alive for as long as she can.

Running out of matches, the child dies and her grandmother carries her soul to Heaven. The next morning, passers-by find the child dead in the nook and take pity on her. They do not know about the visions she saw, or that she will not be cold or hungry any more in Heaven.

Publication
"The Little Match Girl" was first published December 1845 in Dansk Folkekalender for 1846. The work was re-published 4 March 1848 as a part of ''New Fairy Tales. Second Volume. Second Collection. 1848. (Nye Eventyr. Andet Bind. Anden Samling. 1848.), and again 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850.''). The work was also published 30 March 1863 as a part of ''Fairy Tales and Stories. Second Volume. 1863. (Eventyr og Historier. Andet Bind. 1863.'')

Live-action film

 * In 1928, La Petite Marchande d'Allumettes (The Little Match Girl), a forty-minute silent film by Jean Renoir, was released.
 * La vendedora de rosas directed by Víctor Gaviria, was partially based on the story. The film earned a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
 * In 2013, "Matches," a twelve minute short film based on "The Little Match Girl" was released. The film takes place in a modern day small town and tells the tale of a young red-haired homeless girl named "Matches" who is ignored by the world around her. After a particularly cold night on the street, Matches meets a mysterious figure named "Gabe" who takes her to a house where she encounters a series of events that parallel the visions the little girl experienced in Anderson's original tale.

Animated

 * 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 short The Old Mill. This version of the story is also slightly different from the story, specifically near the end.
 * 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).
 * 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.
 * In 2005, an adaptation of "The Little Match Girl" was released by ADV Films in Hello Kitty Animation Theater Vol. 3.
 * 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 stand alone film. This short was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Animated Short, losing to The Danish Poet. This short was subsequently released as a special feature on the 2006 Platinum Edition DVD of The Little Mermaid.
 * In the 2005 anime series The Snow Queen, based on another H.C. Andersen story, there is an episode entitled "The Little Match Girl".

Music

 * In 1994, Frederik Magle released the album "The song is a Fairytale" with songs based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales with Thomas Eje and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen amongst others. The Little Match Girl is one of the songs.
 * In 1988–96, the German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann wrote an opera based on the story called Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, also including a text by Red Army Faction founder Gudrun Ensslin.
 * In 1973, The American Opera composer William Byron Webster, wrote a tragic opera for minimal orchestration. The opera was recorded in 1990.
 * In 1995, German singer Meret Becker included the song "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern" in her album Noctambule.
 * In 2001, guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors released the album The Little Match Girl based on the story.
 * In 2001 the Hungarian band Tormentor wrote the song "The Little Match Girl," with lyrics based on the story.
 * 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.
 * Xiong Tian Ping the song 'Match Heaven' was performed by the Taiwanese pop artist Xiong Tian Ping in his debut album.
 * In 2005, Erasure made a music video of their song "Breathe", based on a modern adaptation of the story.
 * In 2006, the English band The Tiger Lillies and a string trio released the album "The Little Match Girl" based on the story.
 * American composer David Lang completed his own rendition of the original story in 2007. The Little Match Girl Passion is scored for four solo voices, soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with percussion, and was written for Paul Hillier and his ensemble Theater of Voices. The work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2008. It presents Hans Christian Andersen's tale in Lang's characteristic post-minimalist style with thematic influence from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions.
 * In 2010, the Oxford based band Stornoway mentions 'The Story of the Match Stick Girl' in their song 'Here comes the Blackout'.
 * Akuno-P/Mothy created "The Flames of the Yellow Phosphorus", an adaptation of the tale.
 * Appearing in the popular Japanese idol game, THE iDOLM@STER, 'Little Match Girl' first appeared as a reservation privilege DLC only song for THE iDOLM@STER 2.
 * In 2012 The Crüxshadows recorded the song "The Matchstick girl" on their album, As The Dark Against My Halo. According to front-man for the band, Rogue, the song "Matchstick Girl" refers to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Match Girl.[4]
 * In 2013, the Paris world premiere of The Little Match Girl Opera by composer William Byron Webster (words and music 1973–75) and produced by Adrian Harrington Brown was performed in the Salle des Mariages, Mairie du 7 Arrondissement, as part of the 7 En Musique festival. Scored for two voices with Anne-Chantal Carrière (soprano) as the little match girl and Véronique Bauer (mezzo) as the grandmother and accompanied by pianist Gilles Nicolas.

16mm short subject

 * In 1954, Castle Films released a 16 mm English language version of a 1952 b&w French short live-action film. Instead of her grandmother, the Virgin Mary, whom the match girl believes is her own long-lost mother, takes the girl to heaven. No mention is made of the father beating the child. Music from The Nutcracker is used in one of the dream sequences.

Television

 * In the 1970 Mary Tyler Moore' episode "Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid", when Rhoda learns that Mary is working and can't spend Christmas Eve with her, Rhoda makes reference to the story by asking whether she (Rhoda) is supposed to spend the evening alone standing in the snow lighting matches.
 * In 1974, a contemporarized version set in Cincinnati on Christmas Eve was aired on WLWT. It featured a nine-year-old Sarah Jessica Parker in the role of the title character. This Christmas special was placed in syndication and last aired on the Family Channel in December 1982.
 * In 1987, ITV Wales and West released "The Little Match Girl" a musical based on the original story. The cast included Twiggy and Roger Daltrey. It included the song "Mistletoe and Wine", which became a Christmas hit a year later for Cliff Richard.
 * In 1987, a modernized version, "The Little Match Girl", was shown on American television. The cast included Keshia Knight Pulliam, Rue McLanahan, and William Daniels.
 * In 2009, a modernized version set to original music and narrated by F. Murray Abraham was presented by HBO Storybook Musicals, in which the girl is the daughter of a homeless New York couple forced to live underground in an abandoned subway station due to the economic collapse of the 1990s.
 * On the first episode of Gilmore Girls, before going into her grandmother's house, Rory says to Lorelai "So, do we go in or do we just stand here re-enacting The little match girl?"

Literature

 * In 1996, Hogfather, one of Terry Pratchett's popular Discworld series of novels, gave the story a decidedly less morbid ending, thanks to the intervention of Death himself; currently acting as the Hogfather to compensate for the original's absence, he uses his current status to give the little match girl the present of a future.
 * 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.
 * In Neil Gaiman's 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".
 * A Spider-Man short story titled "Leah" about a homeless little girl who goes into a coma and is found by Spider-Man, the doctors inform Spider-Man she won't make it, as Spidey kisses Leah on the cheek he wishes her "sweet, sweet dreams"; Leah falls asleep looking at newspaper clippings of Spider-Man mirroring the girl's death while looking into the matches. The story was originally in the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Annual No. 1.
 * "Match Girl," a short story by Anne Bishop, published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears in 1995.
 * In 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés Clarissa Pinkola Estés page 319 The Little Match Girl, as told to the author by her aunt, is followed by a lucid analysis.
 * Novelist Gregory Maguire read a short story based on "The Little Match Girl" over the air on NPR. In 2009 he expanded the short story into a novel, published as Matchless: A Christmas Story.
 * The Little Match Girl is sometimes referenced in the Japanese manga, Crayon Shin Chan.
 * The Little Match Girl is retold in a poem by William McGonagall (1825–1902)
 * In the Piers Anthony novel "The Color of Her Panties", chapter 11, the characters reference the story of the Little Match Girl, and the Demoness Metria takes the form of an orphan waif selling matches. As she lights her matches, the heart's desire of the one for whom she lights the match is granted.
 * In Anne Ursu's 2011 novel "Breadcrumbs", the main character Hazel meets a character based on the Little Match Girl in the woods.

Other



 * Suikoden III, (2002), 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.
 * "Resurrection of the Little Match Girl" is a 2003 Korean movie.
 * In the Japanese anime Gakuen Alice, the main character, Mikan Sakura puts on a play about The Little Match Girl to earn money.
 * In the Japanese anime Little Busters!, the Little Match Girl is mentioned by a main character, Komari Kamikita, who takes great interest in fairy tales.
 * The Colombian movie La Vendedora De Rosas (Little Rose Selling Girl) is a 1998 film about homeless children victims of solvent abuse, loosely based in The Little Match Girl.
 * In France, director Jean Benoît-Lévy's film version, La Jeune Fille aux Allumettes (1952) included a brief dance sequence with ballet star Janine Charrat.
 * The Fairy Tale Forest (Sprookjesbos in Dutch) of the amusement park Efteling in the Netherlands has a three dimensional attraction showing the story of the Little Match Girl, called Het Meisje met de Zwavelstokjes. In this attraction, use is made of the pepper's ghost technique.

Analogous incident
An instance of children dying in pathetic circumstances such as the 5 homeless boys who died of asphyxiation in a dumpster in November 2012 in China, "Rest in Peace: The Dead Children of Guizhou" is of great public interest. Reporting on such incidents alerts the public to situations of public interest but may also be viewed by authorities as propaganda intended to incite social unrest. In this particular case Chinese authorities persecuted the Chinese journalist who widely disseminated news of the incident and hindered coverage of the matter by international journalists. In this particular incident the journalist, Li Yuanlong, was a dissident who had a history of engaging in naive pro-American activities and had previously been imprisoned.