The pamphlet contains nine lovely songs written by the greatest Danish authors of the period, set to music by the most famous Danish musicians of the period. Andersen's contribution is the song "Hun har mig glemt" (She Has me Forgotten), which he had printed for the first time in 1854, but in a different version, with different wording. Here, it is set to music by F. Andersen.

Our main sources of knowledge about Hans Christian Andersen’s library come from two publications: the auction catalogue of his books, after his death, and the auction catalogue of Edvard Collin’s books ten years later. Edvard Collin was the universal heir to Andersen’s entire estate and he kept many of Andersen’s books that therefore did not enter the auction catalogue after Andersen, but that were then sold after he died. Our knowledge about these collections is gathered in Estrid and Erik Dal’s work “Fra H.C. Andersen’s Boghylde”, from 1961. Here it is stated that 75 Danish books from Andersen’s library have been located, although only ¼ of them were present at the auction of his belongings. The auction record, in other words, “is an inadequate witness to what he owned at his death, an even more so throughout his life.” (p. 12). It is, however, the best we have collected in one place. As long as we remember that he also owned books that were not present in this catalogue. 

Whereas the importance of presentation copies from Andersen were quite overlooked at the time, Dal rightly note that ”Presentation copies to Andersen, or books in which he has written his ownership signature, belong to him in quite another manner, and in some cases they shed rays of light on their owner, maybe even rays that enlighten otherwise unknown details.” (p.10). 

Books from Andersen's library are of the utmost scarcity and almost never appear on the market. We have only ever encountered very few.