Books were not censored in Victorian England. But all the same there were fairly strict rules governing what might and what might not be published, especially for children. As Hans Christian Andersen was generally perceived as a children’s writer pure and simple rather than as a writer for both adults and children, such rules were also applied to translations of his stories. This paper examines Anderson’s own ideas about censorship, and briefly discusses the literary climate in Britain in the early decades of the 19th century, up to the 1840s when the first translations appeared. This discussion is followed by examples from Andersen Tales in Victorian translation where there is clear evidence of (self)-censorship from the publisher and/or the translator. Most examples are from the work of Caroline Peachey, one of the first translators, and Dr. Dulcken, by far the most productive of the 19th century translators of Andersen. It is the author’s contention that with experienced writers like these, censorship was not really needed: they knew what was expected of them, and translated accordingly.