 Image caption The story is dedicated: "To Mme Bunkeflod, from her devoted HC Andersen" 
 
 An early work by Hans Christian Andersen has been found at the bottom of a box near the Danish fairy tale writer's home city, experts say. The story of ‘The... (Associated Press) 
 
 Retired historian Esben Brage said Thursday he found the six-page text in early October while searching in the National Archives through boxes that had belonged to wealthy families from Andersen's home-town of Odense in central Denmark. The Tallow Candle is a short story about a revered candle that becomes grimy and neglected until its inner beauty is recognised and ignited. Andersen expert Ejnar Stig Askgaard described the discovery as "sensational". Askgaard said Andersen knew the Bunkeflod widow well and regularly visited her, reading to her and borrowing books from her, even after he moved to Copenhagen to attend university. "I have no doubt that it is Christian Andersen who wrote it," he said. Born to a charwoman and a shoemaker in 1805, Andersen wrote nearly 160 fairy tales in his life including classics like "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Mermaid."
– A Danish historian has found what he believes is an early Hans Christian Anderson manuscript buried at the bottom of a box in the National Archives of Funen. "I was ecstatic," the historian says. "I had never imagined this." The handwritten story, titled "Tallow Candle," tells the story of a neglected candle that can't light itself until its inner beauty is recognized, the BBC reports. The dedication reads, "To Mme Bunkeflod, from her devoted HC Andersen." Andersen had a close relationship with a widow named Mme Bunkeflod. "I often get calls about stuff thought to have been off Andersen's hand. Most of the time, it is not," the senior curator at Odense's Hans Christian Andersen museum tells the AP. " This time I was thrilled." Experts say the piece lacks the grace of Andersen's later work, and was likely written around 1823, while he was still in grammar school. "This is a very early attempt at prose by Andersen, who was then 18," the curator says. You can read an English translation here.