A princess has eleven brothers. The twelve siblings live happily and well, until their father decides to remarry. Their new stepmother is a wicked woman, and she turns all the brothers into swans and banishes the princess from the palace. And so it is left to Elisa to endure countless hardships alone in order to save her beloved brothers from the spell. This edition also contains a new translation of Hans Christian Andersen's beloved story The Nightingale , a story about a Chinese emperor who prefers the song of a mechanical nightingale to that of the real bird. When he falls ill, it is the nightingale who saves him. The story has been adapted for stage, opera, muscial theatre and television many times.