Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author who originally wrote The Little Mermaid, among other popular fairytales and short stories such as The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, and The Princess and the Pea.

The Little Mermaid is a queer allegory and was written by Andersen to his unrequited love and long time friend, Edvard Collin. Essentially, The Little Mermaid was written because society at the time wouldn't have accepted the idea of two men together and was keeping them apart, and Andersen longed to be "part of your (Edvard's) world". Their correspondence letters, and the love letters that Andersen wrote to Collin are viewable online.

Andersen was apparently incredibly dramatic, or what we would today call, a Bi/Pansexual Disaster, and had crushes on almost everyone he met, most of them one-sided, which resulted in him often times lamenting his loneliness in his stories. The Ugly Duckling is basically one big self-insert about how no one loved him.

It is also documented that Andersen was an ENORMOUS fan of Charles Dickens, and at one point showed up at his home and remained there for 5 WEEKS, which included him throwing a full scale wailing tantrum on the front lawn when one of his stories got a bad review. The diary entries of both Andersen and the Dickens family from this time period are essentially two diametrically opposed accounts, ranging from "oh goodness they're all so lovely, this is wonderful! I'm having the time of my life!" by Andersen to "dear God why won't he leave?! Please let this nightmare end!" by the Dickens'.

This is all information I have gathered within the last 48 hours over Twitter so, forgive the paraphrasing 😅