In the bottom of a box in an archive on the island of Funen, historian Esben Brage discovered a hand-written manuscript identified as a copy of the first fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen. "The Tallow Candle" was probably written in the mid-1820s, while Andersen was in his late teens. He had dedicated the story to Madam Bunkeflod, a widowed neighbor. “The fairy tale was a present. A present of thanks to a woman whose home had been very important to him,” said Ejnar Stig Askgaard of the Odense City Museum.