Short Stories: The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde The Happy Prince and Other Tales Beautifully written modern fairy tales intended for reading to children but with a message for adults, too. Wilde's first published collection containing the classics The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant. The Happy Prince - The Books - The Book Club - ABC TV The Happy Prince Overview Animation by Benny Guitar Carr ï¿½The Happy Princeï¿½, a short story by the infamous Victorian writer Oscar Wilde. It tells the tale of an ornately decorated statue who is saddened by the poverty around him and so he asks his only friend, a little sparrow, to take his jewels to those in need. When the Happy Prince has given all he has, and is no longer so beautiful, the rich men of the city meet to decide his fate. The story was first told by Wilde, in 1885, to a group of friends in Cambridge. It wasnï¿½t until 1888 that it was published as part of a collection of Wildeï¿½s fairy tales, ï¿½The Happy Prince and Other Storiesï¿½.

Wilde described the book as being ï¿½meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joyï¿½. Author Profile High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt. He was very much admired indeed. "He is as beautiful as a weathercock," remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; "only not quite so useful," he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not. "Why can't you be like the Happy Prince?" asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. "The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything." "I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy," muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue. "He looks just like an angel," said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores.

"How do you know?" said the Mathematical Master, "you have never seen one." "Ah! but we have, in our dreams," answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming. top ↑ JENNIFER BYRNE: Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince. NARRATOR: Once upon a time, high above the city stood a beautiful statue of a prince, clad in gold, with two sapphires for eyes and a bright ruby on his sword. Saddened by the poverty around him, he asks his only friend, a little swallow, to take his jewels to those in need. When the happy prince has given all he has, and is left blind and ugly, the rich men of the city meet to decide his fate. JENNIFER BYRNE: Now, I'm looking for the courageous, hard-hearted person that says they were unaffected by The Happy Prince. Julia, tell us why you loved this. JULIA BAIRD: Not me. Look, it's just such a moving tale.

I think the thing about Oscar Wilde is we remember him for his epigrams and his wittiness and 'Nothing to declare but my genius' for the scandalous trial. And, yeah, he's kind of a big softie and he writes about these grand themes of friendship and sacrifice and they're not pretty endings. And I think that's why I've always remembered this being read as a child, because it's deeply sad and beautiful at the same time. JENNIFER BYRNE: It was read to you as a child? It doesn't seem to me much of a kids' fable. JULIA BAIRD: But it's part of the whole Grimm tradition. There's another one of his books, of his stories, what, is it The Star-Child? It's this whole trajectory about this journey of a child, and at the end he becomes king and the everything is wonderful, but he died three years later, then there was an evil king. That's the last sentence. It's like, 'Oh!' JASON STEGER: Fairytales are never supposed to have happy endings. JULIA BAIRD: Quite. Disney ruined it. JASON STEGER: They're all grim. Literally.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Do you think it's a fable? Is it a fairytale? Is it a moral tale? JON RONSON: It's a morality tale. I was kind of unmoved. I didn't care whether the swallow and the prince were happy or not. I just didn't care. MARIEKE HARDY: Jon, you brute! JON RONSON: I just didn't care. I read it twice. After the first time, I thought I've got to give it another... I was left unmoved. Especially because, did you notice the casual anti-Semitism in there? The little swallow. JULIA BAIRD: That's interesting. JON RONSON: I watched the cartoon of it, and they didn't have this bit. The little swallow, who's learning all about kindness, is distributing the emeralds to this and that, and, at one point, the swallow flies over some Jews who go like that. And I thought, 'Jesus!' JENNIFER BYRNE: They were in a counting house, aren't they? Bargaining or something. JON RONSON: Yeah, yeah.

I know it was a different time, but still, it's like, 'Jesus'. If the happy prince and the swallow are that nice, they wouldn't have hated Jews so much. (Laughter) JON RONSON: Hated the Jews, that swallow. I think that's probably why I was left unmoved. JENNIFER BYRNE: You thought, what, hypocritical swallow? JON RONSON: Yeah, well, just an anti-Semitic swallow. I'm very watchful for anti-Semitic birds. (Laughter) MARIEKE HARDY: I liked it very much. It's not my favourite story in the book. The Nightingale And The Rose to me is more shocking, saddening, beautiful, piercing. I had friends that did The Nightingale And The Rose as a puppet show for children. And I cried so hard, some of the children had to leave. It wasn't, 'I'm in a theatre and having a little cry.' I was racked with sobs and passing tissues and it completely broke my spirit. These poor children were being taken from the room with shielded eyes and ushered out. So that story still has that effect on me.

JULIA BAIRD: But it's of sacrifice - it's a similar idea in that. MARIEKE HARDY: It's painful. It is, so yeah. JASON STEGER: I see it as a question of sacrifice and this question of value as well. And I still can't read it without tearing up at the end. When I was reading it, I used to read it to my kids and I'd get to the last couple of paragraphs and Gabriel. MARIEKE HARDY: 'Dad's crying again.' JASON STEGER: 'Dad! You're crying!' (Laughter) MARIEKE HARDY: I love how he first started off telling this to people at parties. No-one would invite Oscar Wilde to parties anymore. 'Everyone, I've got a story. Let's all have some wine. And then everyone died.' It's actually quite gloomy, and that's how it started off - he was telling them. But I guess it does bring to life, you know, the thing about the Marx Brothers touring all their shows before they made them into films, so they knew where to pause.

If he was telling these as stories in mixed company and then writing them down, I think he does know. He knows his audience. He knows the moments to pull his audience. JON RONSON: That's what David Sedaris does. MARIEKE HARDY: Yeah. JON RONSON: He writes a story, then he reads it out and works out which bits are playing well, which are dragging, then rewrites it. It's a good way to do it. MARIEKE HARDY: It is good, isn't it? JULIA BAIRD: I think Wilde was also reading these to his two sons as well. You kind of also forget that he had sons that he was writing stories for. JASON STEGER: I can remember being read it, and I loved it. MARIEKE HARDY: That explains a lot. Your dark heart. JASON STEGER: Lead heart, yes. JENNIFER BYRNE: It's still got the feeling of Oscar Wilde.

Every now and then, he just sneaks in something which is clearly not for the children, like when the swallow complains that the Reed, who he falls in love with for a while, 'She had no conversation.' (Laughter) JON RONSON: 'She was rooted to the ground.' JULIA BAIRD: And she bent with every wind. JASON STEGER: She curtseys the wind. JULIA BAIRD: Curtseys, right. JASON STEGER: It's very witty. JULIA BAIRD: Loved her narrow waist, though. JENNIFER BYRNE: He did love her narrow waist. And the master of mathematics, who, when he heard his students had been dreaming of angels, and Wilde notes 'He did not approve of children dreaming. Not at all.' So it is still quite Wildean. JULIA BAIRD: Yes. MARIEKE HARDY: It sometimes does stories a disservice to pick them apart. I know that's what we're doing. But it's about kindness and happiness, and I think to look further does the story a... JULIA BAIRD: It's also about seeing suffering and responding to it.

I think that is what you really think as a child, that no-one would ever not respond to someone else's suffering if they knew they were in pain. If they knew they needed bread or shelter or anything. Or if you had something that might make their life better. MARIEKE HARDY: That your life is enriched by doing so. JULIA BAIRD: Yes, and the sparrow came back and his heart was warm and the statue says, 'Because you've done a good thing for someone.' There's something in the childish sensibility that really reacts to that. JASON STEGER: So we should be giving this to all the politicians in the world. JON RONSON: There's a strange connection with A Visit To The Goon Squad, 'cause in both books, people get pleasure from gold leaf. MARIEKE HARDY: Yeah! (Laughter) JON RONSON: In A Visit To The Goon Squad, Bennie Salazar flakes gold into his coffee as an aphrodisiac. JENNIFER BYRNE: To keep him young. JON RONSON: To keep him young.

And in The Little Prince, the swallow strips off the gold and hands it out to the people because stupid people think gold will make them happy. MARIEKE HARDY: It does make them very pink in the cheeks. JULIA BAIRD: That's right. MARIEKE HARDY: Yeah. JENNIFER BYRNE: Yeah! I just want to have a look. Is this your old one? Is this it? JASON STEGER: Yeah. MARIEKE HARDY: The one you were read? JASON STEGER: Yeah. I got it for my birthday in 1962. MARIEKE HARDY: Aw! JASON STEGER: It's even got my name. JENNIFER BYRNE: Oh! He's written in it! MARIEKE HARDY: Oh! 'Jason Steger.' You spelt your name right. JENNIFER BYRNE: It's got his six-year-old writing. Oh, that's so sweet! MARIEKE HARDY: He did that before the show to make it look authentic. That's his actual handwriting now.

JENNIFER BYRNE: The Happy Prince, and because it's so tiny, it always comes with other wild fables, and so you get, you know, five for one, including The Nightingale And The Rose. That is our club for another month. It's a big thank you to tonight's Book Clubbers. Won't you please thank Jon, Marieke, Jason and Julia. top ↑ I love this story, and The Selfish Giant. It's great to see them crop up for discussion, because I thought these fairy tales were becoming lost to this generation. I use them in my English classes whenever I have the opportunity. The themes of what is truly valuable and of sacrifice are timeless. J French 17 Feb 2012 9:33:34pm I had never read this, or had this read to me as a kid, so it was such a pleasure for this recommendation. The story was gorgeous, just pure children story-telling. And there were enough sly adult-related nods and Wildean epigrams to delight any reader. The description of the swallow noting a group of Jews counting money in a drak alley (or something along those lines) was one such example.

Let's not get too PC here - the story was written in the 19th century, and whether it's either pre- or post-WWII, everyone can appreciate the wit without being put on the back-foot. I also read the other stories of this collection too, and I would recommend The Selfish Giant as the best of the lot. A very simple story that opens up into religious considerations at the end. M Wright 15 Nov 2011 9:42:58am The happy prince is like a rich religious org. who collect tonnes of gold, and use the gold to buy limos and lands. instead of charity, but changes, i guess. jtts top ↑ Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a noted surgeon and eye specialist. His mother Lady Jane Wilde was an Irish nationalist, poet, journalist and women rights activist. Wilde studied Classics at Trinity College in Dublin, and then in 1874 won a scholarship to study at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Whilst at university Wilde was greatly influenced by the ideas of Walter Pater and John Ruskin, both prominent English academics based at Oxford who were figureheads of the aesthetic movement. Wilde became an acolyte of the movement that valued art for artï¿½s sake, beauty and pleasure above all else. Wilde was a very good student, whilst at university he obtained a double first in Classics. He also won the Newdigate Prize for a poem he submitted Ravenna. After university Wilde moved to London and began to immerse himself in London society and literary scene. He developed a reputation for his wit, flamboyant dress sense and writing skill. He became a journalist, and eventually an editor for a society womenï¿½s magazine called The Womenï¿½s World. In 1881 his first poetry collection, aptly titled Poems was published. In 1882 he embarked on a lecture tour of America. On his arrival in the United States he is famous for stating to the New York customs official ï¿½I have nothing to declare except my genius.ï¿½ In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd, they soon had two sons Cyril and Vyvyan.

Some claim The Happy Prince was written for his sons, but at the time the collection of stories were published in 1888 they were only two and three years old. Throughout the late 1880s Wilde continued to write ï¿½ essays on art and aestheticism, political essays, short stories, poems and plays. His only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1891. Wildeï¿½s fame as a wit and sharp observer of late-Victorian society grew with the release of several popular comedic plays including Lady Windermereï¿½s Fan (1892) and his most famous The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). His dramatic play Salome (1891), which was originally written in French, and was first performed in Paris in 1896. Deemed too scandalous for the British public, the play was refused a license to be performed in England. It was around 1887 that Wilde began to have extended affairs with men. His most significant and infamous homosexual relationship was with Lord Alfred Douglas.

Douglasï¿½s father ï¿½ the Marquis of Queensbury ï¿½ disapproved of his sonï¿½s relationship with Wilde. Queensbury eventually publicly insulted Wilde, leaving a note at his club that said ï¿½For Oscar Wilde posing Sodomite.ï¿½ This prompted Wilde to sue Queensberry for libel resulting in a trial and the eventual prosecution of Wilde for ï¿½homosexual offencesï¿½, for which he was imprisoned for two years with hard labour. His imprisonment, from 1895 til 1897, left Wilde financially, socially and physically weakened. Upon his release from prison Wilde lived in poverty in Paris. He also lived briefly in Naples, reunited with Alfred Douglas for a short time. It was in France that Wilde wrote his most famous poem about his time in prison, the Ballad of Reading Gaol. The letters he wrote to Alfred Douglas in prison were published as De Profundis in 1905. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900. Several days before his death his was visited by a Catholic priest who baptised him.

Wildeï¿½s tomb is in Pï¿½re Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the epitaph on the tomb is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn. Oscar Wilde Book List - FictionDB General Fiction Dec-2015 This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.... General Fiction Aug-2015 Oscar Wilde was a prominent Irish playwright, novelist, and poet in the late 19th century. Wilde's distinct style makes his work a great read for children and adults alike. Wilde remains popular today for classics such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, ... Literary Jul-2015 Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an extremely popular Irish writer and poet who wrote in different forms throughout his career and became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.

Today he is remembered for his ... General Fiction Jan-2015 IT was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and a... General Fiction Dec-2014 Rabindranath Tagore, also written Rabindranatha Thakura, (7 May 1861 - 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20t... General Fiction Dec-2014 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remember...

General Fiction Dec-2014 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remember... General Fiction Dec-2014 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remember... General Fiction Dec-2014 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.

Today he is remember... General Fiction Dec-2014 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remember... General Fiction Sep-2014 Oscar Wilde is best known for his plays, stories and poems, and for the amusing comments he made on a huge range of topics. Some readers may be surprised that this famous personality also wrote stories for children. His own mother, Jane Francisca Spe... General Fiction Aug-2014 The Happy Prince and other stories by Oscar Wilde. In a town where a lot of poor people suffer, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late "Happy Prince," who in reality has never exper...

General Fiction Jul-2014 Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an extremely popular Irish writer and poet who wrote in different forms throughout his career and became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his ... General Fiction Jun-2014 The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890. The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. ... General Fiction May-2014 The Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Oscar Wilde is a story written first published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1889. The Portrait of Mr. W. H. also later appeared in Oscar Wilde's wonderful short story collection Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories.... General Fiction Mar-2014 The stories in this volume have been published in the past under the title "Stories for Children," which is the one thing the majority of them decidedly are not.

It is well-documented that prior to their publication many of the stories were told by O... Graphic Novel Jan-2014 The second volume in a series of comic book adaptations of Wilde's tales, Russell's full-colour graphic adaptations of Oscar Wilde's 'The Remarkable Rocket' and 'The Young King' are exquisitely spun tales for adults and children alike.... Historical Romance Nov-2013 Dorian Gray is een knappe, naïeve jongeman die in Engeland woont. Een vriend van hem, Basil Hallward, is schilder en maakt een perfect portret van hem. Het is zo perfect dat hij het niet wil tentoonstellen (het zou te veel van hemzelf weggeven), en ... General Fiction Nov-2013 The Young King is a short story by Oscar Wilde. Dedicated to Margaret Lady Brooke (the Ranee of Sarawak) The Young King tells the story of the illegitimate shepherd son of the recently dead king's daughter of an unnamed country. Being his only heir, ... General Fiction Oct-2013 "SALOME" has made the author's name a household word wherever the English language is not spoken.

Few English plays have such a peculiar history. Written in French in 1892 it was in full rehearsal by Madame Bernhardt at the Palace Theatre when it was... General Fiction Dec-2012 EXCEPTIONAL UNABRIDGED COLLECTION Read one of the greatest masterpieces of all time in a beautiful edition. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet, who built an esthete and hedonist dandy character. Inseparable from his h... General Fiction Nov-2012 Oscar Wilde’s infamous wit, taste for scandal, and gift for revealing the hypocrisies of fashionable society are on display here in this collection of his finest plays. A genius both of and ahead of his time, he built his craft on the eternal quest... Suspense Nov-2012 It was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and a...

General Fiction Nov-2012 In many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been made on that splendour of mounting which now characterises our Shakespearian revivals in England, it seems to have been tacitly assumed by the critics that Shakespeare himself was more o... General Fiction Oct-2012 ERNEST. Well, while you have been playing, I have been turning over the pages with some amusement, though, as a rule, I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anyt... General Fiction Jan-2010 Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an extremely popular Irish writer and poet who wrote in different forms throughout his career and became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his ... General Fiction Oct-2009 Weird tales from a master of drama and the written word Oscar Wilde genius as a playwright, author and poet is well known and highly regarded. The quality of his work has ensured that it has often been adapted for the cinema screen and the first chil...

General Fiction Oct-2009 "An Ideal Husband" is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London, in "the present," and takes place over the c... General Fiction Oct-2009 Selected and presented by one of Wilde's biggest fans, the book includes a foreword from Stephen Fry, as well as introductions to the stories themselves, explaining why they mean so much to him and why they should mean a lot to you too. llustrated by... General Fiction Sep-2009 Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in ... General Fiction May-2009 "The Devoted Friend" is a short fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde. The tale concerns Big Hugh, the miller, and his best friend Hans. The story is told by a linnet to a water-rat following a conversation about what it means to be a devoted friend.

Lik... General Fiction May-2009 The Remarkable Rocket is a short story by Oscar Wilde. This story concerns a firework, who is one of many to be let off at the wedding of a prince and princess. The rocket is extremely pompous and self-important, and denigrates all the other firework... General Fiction May-2009 Playwright, poet, essayist, flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde pack an astonishing amount of work, genius, and controversy into two short decades, producing masterworks in every literary genre. This selection includes almost all of his short stor... General Fiction Oct-2008 The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde includes the two definitive story collections The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). This volume collects exquisite and poignant tales of true beauty, selfless love, genero... General Fiction Sep-2008 The famous Canterville Ghost haunts an old house, but the ghost becomes unhappy when the new owners play tricks on him! In the other stories, we meet Lord Arthur Savile, who has to murder someone before he can get married, and we discover the secret ...

General Fiction Sep-2008 Three of Wilde s short stories adapted into enchanting plays for young children "The Selfish Giant" chases away spring and summer, leaving the garden in a permanent winter. Only when the giant realises his selfishness and opens his garden to the loca... General Fiction Nov-2007 . . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobil... General Fiction Apr-2007 Oscar Wilde's stories are much-loved classics and make a fantastic story collection. They are timeless. moving and very readable. Complemented by atmospheric and evocative artwork from a leading illustrator. Titles included are: The Selfish Giant The... General Fiction Sep-2006 This comprehensive collection showcases Oscar Wilde's brilliant storytelling skills and his amazing stylistic versatility, ranging from fairy tales and ghost stories to detective yarns and comedies of manners. It includes the complete texts of "The H...

General Fiction May-2005 A uniquely personal collection of Oscar Wilde's stories, introduced by his very own grandson. Each tale is filled with wonder and joy. ""Why, anyone can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination." "--From "The Remarkable Rocket" "The ... Graphic Novel Jan-2004 Arguably the most famous and beloved of Oscar Wilde's nine fairy tales, this particular rendition stands apart from the others due to its brilliant illustrations by a a master of comic art. After dying young, the Happy Prince's soul inhabits a beauti... Literary Oct-2003 The Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the only truly complete and authoritative single-volume edition of Oscar Wilde s works, and is available in both hardback and this paperback edition. Continuously in print since 1948, the Collins Complete ... General Fiction Dec-2002 A collection of short stories by the famous poet, playwright and raconteur, originally published in 1891. Contains: Lord Arthur Saville's Crime The Sphinx Without a Secret The Canterville Ghost The Model Millionaire The Portrait of Mr. W. H. Introduc...

General Fiction Aug-2002 Arch moralist Lady Windermere, suspicious of her husband's infidelity, considers running of with a roue until her rival points out the difference between morality and its appearance. This classic Oscar Wilde play bristles with his trademark wit and h... General Fiction Nov-2001 Oscar Wilde-witty raconteur, flamboyant hedonist, and self-destructive lover-is most familiar as the author of brilliant comedies, including The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, and the decadent novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. This se... General Fiction Jun-2001 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about', said Oscar Wilde more than a hundred years ago. But this remark seems perhaps even more relevant to our present world where so many seek publicit... General Fiction Feb-2001 Strange and wonderful things happen in the seven short stories in this book. Who is the Young King? Why is it always winter in The Giant's Garden? A book of fairytales, but one that will appeal to all ages. Oscar Wilde opens up a world of witches, me...

General Fiction Dec-1999 With an Introduction, Notes and Bibliography by Anne Varty, Royal Holloway, University of London. WILDE, GLAMOROUS AND NOTORIUS, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figu... General Fiction Oct-1999 The classic Oscar Wilde story is now beautifully illustrated and abridged by Alexis Deacon. The Selfish Giant has a beautiful garden, but he won't let any of the children play in it. Winter comes and never leaves, until the power of love brings Sprin... General Fiction Jul-1999 This 1895 play revolves around blackmail and political corruption. The theme of public and private honor runs throughout the work. The play opens at a fashionable dinner party in London. Several guests are involved in a plot to build a canal through ... Fantasy Feb-1999 The Young King is a short story by Oscar Wilde. Dedicated to Margaret Lady Brooke (the Ranee of Sarawak) The Young King tells the story of the illegitimate shepherd son of the recently dead king's daughter of an unnamed country. Being his only heir, ...

Graphic Novel Oct-1998 The Birthday of the Infanta is a heart-wrenching tale about inner and outer beauty. Dedicated to Mrs. William H Grenfell of Taplow Court (Lady Desborough) The Birthday of the Infanta is about a hunchbacked dwarf, found in the woods by courtiers of th... Literary Jun-1998 Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish writer and poet who distinguished himself as a leader of London's school of Aesthetics in the late nineteenth century. He became famous for his long hair, flamboyant dress, green carnations and colorful, biting wi... General Fiction Apr-1998 This classic volume is a collection of short stories by Oscar Wilde and inckudes the following: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, The Canterville Ghost, The Sphinx Without a Secret, The Model Millionaire andThe Portrait of Mr. W. H.... General Fiction Sep-1995 The Happy Prince was first published in 1888 and Oscar Wilde wrote it, along with his other fairy tales, for his two young sons Vyvyan and Cecil.

It is just as important now as it was when it was written and it's impossible not be moved by the beauti... General Fiction Jan-1994 Award-winning illustrator P. Craig Russell's adaptations of Oscar Wilde's"The Remarkable Rocket" and "The Young King," in a signed and limited edition, are exquisitely spun tales for adults and children alike."... General Fiction Nov-1993 Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) has probably attracted more critical and biographical attention in recent years than any other writer of the late 19th century. Renowned for his skills in shocking a prurient bourgeosie, he first built his career as a raconteu... Literary Oct-1989 Introduction (by V. Holland) Part One. Stories Chapter 1. "The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 2. "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime Chapter 3. "The Canterville Ghost Chapter 4. "The Sphinx Without a Secret Chapter 5. "The Model Millionaire Chapter 6. "...

The Model Millionaire General Fiction Hughie Erskine is in love and wants to marry, but the girl's father will not allow it, since Erskine has no money. Erskine's friend, Alan Trevor is a painter, and he visits him at his studio one day to find him with a pitiable beggar-the model for hi... Novels And Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde General Fiction This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Theref... Pen, Pencil And Poison General Fiction This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available a... Selected Prose Of Oscar Wilde General Fiction The Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde The Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde contains passages from his short poems, essays, plays, and letters. There is a lot from de Profundis, which was written while Wilde was in prison.

Wilde wrote many essays on other a... Short Works General Fiction This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts ... Shorter Prose Pieces General Fiction The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others. If the poor only had profiles there wou... The Soul of Man General Fiction As a spokesman for aestheticism, Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and then returned to London where he worked prolifica...

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde 4.6 out of 5 stars 55 Price:$5.95+ Free shipping with Amazon Prime Your rating( Clear )Rate this item One person found this helpful 5.0 out of 5 starsAn easy, fun way to get my child reading and ... ByBoxerbabekateon October 22, 2016 An easy, fun way to get my child reading and learning more about the bible. He's usually not very interested in reading but loves the way this is set up like a comic book with lots of pictures and a condensed version of stories. I enjoy listening to him read to me and the little reflection activities at the end of each chapter give us a chance to discuss further or think more about what he read. 3.0 out of 5 starsWilde has a wild imagination ByJean Levinsonon December 29, 2014 I am writing a book of retold fairy tales, so this was interesting source material. Not nuts about Wilde's versions. Format: Mass Market Paperback | Verified Purchase An easy, fun way to get my child reading and learning more about the bible.

He's usually not very interested in reading but loves the way this is set up like a comic book with lots of pictures and a condensed version of stories. I enjoy listening to him read to me and the little reflection activities at the end of each chapter give us a chance to discuss further or think more about what he read. 0Comment | One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Paste the product's web address below: Product not found. Only products offered on Amazon can be linked. Select What's this? What are product links? In the text of your review, you can link directly to any product offered on Amazon.com. To insert a product link, follow these steps: 1. Find the product you want to reference on Amazon.com 2. Copy the web address of the product 3. Click Insert product link 4. Paste the web address in the box 5. Click Select 6. Selecting the item displayed will insert text that looks like this: [[ASIN:014312854XHamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare)]] 7.

When your review is displayed on Amazon.com, this text will be transformed into a hyperlink, like so: Hamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare) You are limited to 10 product links in your review, and your link text may not be longer than 256 characters. Please write at least one word You must purchase at least one item from Amazon to post a comment A problem occurred while submitting your comment. Please try again later. Showing 0 of 0 comments Sort by: I LOVE these fairy tales. The underlying messages are truly profound. The stories themselves are not violent but there is suffering and death. These are the types of stories that stick with you forever and shape your character. 0Comment | 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Paste the product's web address below: Product not found. Only products offered on Amazon can be linked. Select What's this? What are product links? In the text of your review, you can link directly to any product offered on Amazon.com. To insert a product link, follow these steps: 1. Find the product you want to reference on Amazon.com 2. Copy the web address of the product 3. Click Insert product link 4.

Paste the web address in the box 5. Click Select 6. Selecting the item displayed will insert text that looks like this: [[ASIN:014312854XHamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare)]] 7. When your review is displayed on Amazon.com, this text will be transformed into a hyperlink, like so: Hamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare) You are limited to 10 product links in your review, and your link text may not be longer than 256 characters. Please write at least one word You must purchase at least one item from Amazon to post a comment A problem occurred while submitting your comment. Please try again later. Showing 0 of 0 comments Sort by: Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase Better known for his wit, Oscar Wilde demonstrated his heart with these tales. As with all the best fairy tales, they satisfy on multiple levels, as morality tales suitable for children and as more complex explorations of human nature. I loved these stories as a child and still do as an adult. 0Comment | 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Paste the product's web address below: Product not found.

Only products offered on Amazon can be linked. Select What's this? What are product links? In the text of your review, you can link directly to any product offered on Amazon.com. To insert a product link, follow these steps: 1. Find the product you want to reference on Amazon.com 2. Copy the web address of the product 3. Click Insert product link 4. Paste the web address in the box 5. Click Select 6. Selecting the item displayed will insert text that looks like this: [[ASIN:014312854XHamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare)]] 7. When your review is displayed on Amazon.com, this text will be transformed into a hyperlink, like so: Hamlet (The Pelican Shakespeare) You are limited to 10 product links in your review, and your link text may not be longer than 256 characters. Please write at least one word You must purchase at least one item from Amazon to post a comment A problem occurred while submitting your comment. Please try again later. Showing 0 of 0 comments Sort by: Format: Mass Market Paperback | Verified Purchase My wife bought and read this book.

Why am I doing a review of a book that I didn't read? Because my wife told me to do it is the reason, duh. She refuses to do reviews and instead tells me her thoughts and feelings about the books she has read and as my duty as a husband, I steadfastly listen to every word she tells me with great interest... snore, zzzzzz... But since she does buy books and she does tell me about them (whether I want to listen or not), then I think it's only fair that the general population of book readers should get the benefit of her reading them and then telling me about them, so here I am, trying to relay to you, her thoughts about this book. Obviously you know the author, Oscar Wilde, yes? He wrote many a great tome. Though he's not my cup of tea, my wife absolutely adores his work. She says that this book is a fantastic read and that anyone with half a brain should buy and read it. When I mentioned to her that perhaps many of today's readers may not have heard of Oscar Wilde, she is aghast and angry with me and wonders loudly how anyone in the world could NOT know about Oscar Wilde.

I should've kept my mouth shut and never mentioned this to her. But I digress. She says the book is excellent and if my wife says it's a great book, then by golly, it's a great book. So buy the darn thing and enjoy it as much as she did. 0Comment | 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Seven Essential Oscar Wilde Texts Seven Essential Oscar Wilde Texts Updated: 22 October 2016 A celebrated 19th century Irish writer, Oscar Wilde’s poems, stories, and plays, have earned him dedicated fans the world over. During his own era he was one of London ‘s most popular playwrights, and today his most famous works remain household names. Remembered as much for his imprisonment for homosexuality and early death, as for his literary talent, Wilde cuts a fascinating figure, and his work still inspires millions in the UK , Europe , and world today. The Picture of Dorian Gray A complete failure during its time, Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in 1890. Only many years later did audiences come to appreciate the work as a cutting attack on contemporary social values.

Saturated by his famous wit and satire, the novel focuses on themes of extravagance, immorality, and beauty. The narrative is based around the Faustian concept of a young man selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth. As a portrait of the young man withers and fades, his own beauty is preserved in all its glory. The novel raises a whole host of vital questions such as the value of art for art’s sake and society’s vanity. A typically Wildeian epigram from the novel goes: ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it’. The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde was a more prolific writer of drama. The social comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest , is widely considered to be the writer’s greatest masterpiece. The play’s protagonists attempt to escape the burden of their social duties by adopting fake personae with baffling and amusing consequences. Praised for its dazzling humor, the play also acts as a fantastic social satire, treating with triviality everything that Victorian society held most dear. The wit with which recognizable character types and familiar displays of human error are portrayed explain the play’s eternal appeal.

The popularity of the 2002 film adaption , starring Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon, is proof of the fact that Wilde remains as significant today as ever. The Happy Prince and Other Tales Published in 1888, this collection of five short stories, including famous favorites such as The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant , presents a very different side of Wilde’s writing. Aimed at children, these tales of brave animals and noble princes may seem whimsical but don’t let that fool you. Each delicately crafted story hides a crucial moral message and universal themes such as selfishness, greed, and pride. The tragic ending of The Nightingale and the Rose, for instance, acts as a deep criticism of human avarice and questions the ideal of true love. Surprisingly profound, and exquisitely written, Wilde’s talent shines through in every page, in every carefully chosen word. Salome Another of Wilde’s most celebrated works is his tragedy, Salome, published in 1891 and originally written in French . Devoid of his usual wit and humour, this play is instead saturated by hauntingly poetic description and imagery.

It recounts the biblical tale of Salome, step-daughter of King Herod, who morbidly requests the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Wilde’s compelling descriptions illustrate both the glorious highs and the pitiless lows which humanity can reach, and everything human emotion is capable of. Lady Windermere’s Fan Lady Windemere’s Fan , first performed in 1892, bitingly satirizes the morality of Victorian Britain, with hilarious results. Centered around a supposed affair between Lady Windemere’s husband and a character called Mrs Erlynne, the play deals with basic and relatable concepts such as family relations, love, and morality. The play provides excellent juxtaposition of the comic and the serious, ensuring that the ideas it presents pack real impact. The significance of these themes still resonates today, ensuring that Wilde remains perpetually relevant. One of the play’s most famous quotes goes: ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’. De Profundis For Wilde fans wishing to explore the story behind the icon, De Profundis , a long letter written by Wilde during his time of imprisonment, is a must-read.

Convicted of indecency for his homosexual activities, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor. Its title means ‘from the depths’, and its contents recounts both his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (to whom the letter is addressed) and the lavish lifestyle which led to his conviction. Published in 1905, the letter, with its dark tone and harrowing tales, provides stark contrast to Wilde’s former philosophy of pleasure. The Ballad of Reading Gaol Upon his release from prison, Wilde left Britain and Ireland , never to return to either. In his newly adopted motherland of France , he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, his final work. This 1898 extended poem describes, in moving detail, the brutality of prison life and the depths of his suffering during this time. A few short years later Wilde died at the mere age of 46, destitute. This ballad is a highly moving account on the injustice of life and the horror of the prison system, and marks the tragic decline of one of literature’s greatest heroes. Marianna is a languages student and travel blogger with an eye for the unusual, a heart for exploration, a stomach for food adventures, and a penchant for a pun.

Visit her blog, A Hunt Around Russia , to discover more. Fantasy and fairytale in children's literature - The British Library Fantasy and fairytale in children's literature Theme: Childhood and children's literature Professor M O Grenby explores the relationship between fantasy and morality in 18th- and 19th-century children’s literature. It is not as easy as one might think to define fantasy literature, or even the fairy tale. Must a fairy story contain actual fairies for instance? Or is the presence of an ogre, a talking cat, or of larger-than-life characters like Bluebeard enough? Must a fantasy story take place solely in a made-up land, or is it ok if the characters casually slip between our world and the other worlds? And must the fantasy world be full of wonders, impossible in our world, or do alternative universes which are actually rather banal and similar to our own count? What about journeys to strange worlds which turn out to be the past, or the future, of our own? What about worlds that turn out to be merely a character's dream or hallucination?

What about ghost stories, or superhero stories, or utopias, or satires, or stories in which animals are given thoughts and intelligible voices? In short, fantasy literature, and the fairy tale, are amorphous and ambiguous genres, whose boundaries are actually very difficult to set. What is certain, however, is that both fantasy and fairy tale literature have proved hugely popular with children. Indeed for many young readers, and critics, these genres are the core of children's literature. But the place of this kind of make-believe literature in children's culture has not always been secure, and it has a complex history. Historians of children’s books have often seen two forces – realism and didacticism on the one hand, and fantasy and fun on the other – as constantly in competition. Didactic literature, they argue, dominated in the 18th century, but in the Romantic period, around the start of the 19th century, the fantastic (they say) finally began to win the battle. The Brothers Grimm’s fairytales, first published in German in 1812, were translated into English in 1823.

Hans Christian Andersen’s stories began to appear in the 1830s (first translated into English in 1846). And Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. All these books can be seen as marking the beginning of a ‘Golden Age’, with fantasies of various kinds, like E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It (1902), Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904), Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908) and, in America, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), setting the stage for the great fantasy writers of the 20th century, notably C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Philippa Pearce, Lucy Boston, Alan Garner and Philip Pullman. 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground', the original manuscript version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1862-64.

Free from known copyright restrictions Stories of spirits, ghosts and goblins There are, however, several problems with an account that pitches fantasy and fairytale into a simplistic battle with realism and didacticism. First of all, there’s the question of whether didactic and realist children’s literature was really so dominant in the 18th century. Certainly it was the case that many 18th-century educationalists cautioned against introducing children to the supernatural. The philosopher John Locke, writing in Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1693, influentially warned parents and teachers not to tell stories of ‘spirits and goblins’ in case they frightened the children in their care. But we should note that Locke had multiple agendas. He was concerned that supernatural tales were the province of servants and the poor, and one of his main aims was to remove the children of the middle and upper classes from the influence of their social inferiors.

We should also remember that for most children in 18th-century Britain, stories of ghosts and goblins, and popular tales like Fortunatus (with his bottomless purse and magic hat) and Jack the Giant-Killer, would have been standard fare, whether told orally or published in cheap and flimsy chapbooks. Images Usage terms: Free from known copyright restrictions Moral fairytales In any case, the more respectable children's literature that began to emerge for the first time in the 18th century was far from devoid of fantastical elements. One highly regarded favourite in middle- and upper-class families were the fairytales of Charles Perrault, first published in France in the 1690s and in English in 1729. They contained morals alongside the supernatural elements. ‘The Little Red Riding Hood’, for instance, ended with a warning for ‘growing ladies fair’ against wolves ‘With luring tongues, and language wondrous sweet’ who ‘Follow young ladies as they walk the street’. And although fairytales continued to be criticised by Lockean educationalists, new editions were printed especially for children throughout the century.

Similarly, following their first appearance in English at the start of the 18th century, the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments were quickly taken up by a juvenile audience. By the end of the century they were being published in editions designed especially for children, with added didacticism. The compiler of The Oriental Moralist or the Beauties of the Arabian Nights Entertainment (1791), Richard Johnson, admitted that he had ‘added many moral reflections, wherever the story would admit of them’ and ‘considerably altered the tales … to fortify the youthful heart against the impressions of vice’. But in fact the line between fantasy and didacticism had always been very blurred. Even the mid 18th-century pioneers of the ‘new’ children's literature would often include fantastical elements in their supposedly rationalist and instructional books. John Newbery’s Lilliputian Magazine (1751-52), for instance, included accounts of several voyages in which young boys and girls find themselves in strange lands populated by bizarre creatures or full of fairytale possibilities.

One story takes us to ‘Angelica’, for instance, where there lives a race of tiny people with three eyes, one on the tip of their right-hand middle finger, which can be thrust down someone’s throat to determine moral worth. Another story takes us to ‘Petula’, where a poor London orphan named Polly, eventually becomes queen because of her great virtue, and lives in ‘a palace of jasper, the front of which was overlaid with pure gold, the floor paved with pearls and emeralds, and the ceilings adorned with the most curious paintings of sacred history’. Images Usage terms: Free from known copyright restrictions These are moral tales certainly, but they are not so very dissimilar from C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories or the many other ‘alternative world’ fantasies of the 20th century in which undistinguished children find themselves transported to weird and wonderful lands where they suddenly wield great power. Another example of an 18th-century ‘moral fantasy’ is The Prettiest Book for Children; Being the History of an Enchanted Castle; Situated in one of the Fortunate Isles (1770).

Here, the ‘enchanted castle’ belongs to a giant called ‘Instruction’, who employs new methods to teach children lucky enough to find themselves there. Again, this isn’t so very different from more modern fantasy literature. Alice’s Wonderland and the Never Never Land in Peter Pan are really spatial representations of childhood itself, from which adults are debarred and where children can behave entirely as they ‘ought’. The Never Never Land, with its pirates, ‘Indians’, fairies and mermaids and their eternal games and stories, represents Barrie’s idea of what childhood would look like if it could be plotted on a map. Similarly, the ‘Fortunate Isles’ in The Prettiest Book for Children is an adult writer’s fantasy of what childhood should be: a zone of cheerful and effective education. Into the 19th century In the 18th century then, fantasy and didacticism could evidently happily coexist in the same books. But the same was also true in the 19th. A series actually called ‘Moral Fairy Tales’ appeared in the 1820s, including such titles as Miss Selwyn's Mary and Jane; or, Who Would Not Be Industrious?

Not dissimilar was Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses (1874), an imitation of Carroll’s Alice in which the heroine finds herself transported to a world where children’s exteriors exhibit their disagreeable moral characters. In 1853, George Cruikshank, who had illustrated the Brothers Grimm’s tales, began to rewrite fairy stories so that they included obvious anti-alcohol lessons (infuriating Charles Dickens, who, in keeping with the Romantics’ reverence for what they thought a sacred trove of ancient stories, attacked such ‘meddling’ in his 1853 essays ‘Frauds on the Fairies’). And it is difficult to think of a more preachy book than Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863), one of the most celebrated of all children’s fantasies but also including substantial amounts of moralising and a large dose of social realism in its attack on child chimney sweeps. George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (1871) is another hybrid: part fairytale, part social realism, and part religious allegory.

Images Usage terms: Free from known copyright restrictions Even Alice, if looked at in a certain light, can seem rather didactic. Carroll mocks the cautionary tale: the ‘nice little histories’ Alice has read, ‘about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if your hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds’. But Alice does learn as she goes through Wonderland and then the Looking-Glass world. After falling down the rabbit hole (a sort of birth) and wrestling with the Caterpillar’s interrogation about who she actually is, she gradually grows up, encountering small, cuddly creatures first, then scarier figures like the Duchess and the Queen, dealing with increasingly adult concerns (anger, death, judgment), and understanding how to comply with strange rituals like the croquet match. All the time she is gaining a stronger sense of herself until, at the end of the second book, she finally comes into her own by becoming a queen on the chessboard.

Much fantasy literature seeks to teach similar lessons in empathy and what the Germans call Bildung (‘formation’, ‘self-education’). In F. Anstey’s Vice Versa (1882), for example, a boy and his father find they have swapped bodies and must learn to live in each other’s places. And in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’ (from The Happy Prince and Other Tales, 1888), characteristically for late Victorian writing, it is the adults (represented by the giant) who learn from the children as much as the other way round. John Ruskin's fairytale for children, The King of the Golden River The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin, 1851. Free from known copyright restrictions Why fantasy literature became so popular in the 19th century is not exactly clear, but its success was surely linked to rapid social, economic and intellectual change. Social reformers like John Ruskin and William Morris may have seen in the fairytale tradition, with its medievalism and its privileging of individualism, honour and the ‘old ways’, an antidote to the industrial and urban society whose advance they regretted.

(Both Ruskin and Morris wrote successful fantasy novels: respectively The King of the Golden River, 1851; and The Well at the World’s End, 1894). Dickens, in his ‘Frauds on the Fairies’, wrote that ‘In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected’. [1] Kingsley’s Water-Babies was, in part, a response to Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, published only four years earlier, and Nesbit’s innovative time-shift fantasies, such as The Story of the Amulet (1906) were clearly influenced by the same developing ideas in physics that inspired H G Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Whatever led to the rise of fantasy literature, two things are clear. Firstly, by the end of the 19th century children were having a vast range of fairytales and fantasy literature written for them. And secondly, this literature was not quite so different as we might at first think from the realistic and didactic texts that fantasy and fairytales have sometimes been seen as displacing.

Footnotes Hatter's Classics: The Golden Age of Literary Tales Literary stories by Master Storytellers &QUOT;In the past the best writers of children's books all had something to say and they said it surprizingly well. But they did more than this. They permitted children to dance and to dream, to laugh and to cry, to stand in awe before the miracles of nature and before the greatness of man, to be challenged by the mystery of human destiny.&QUOT; Elizabeth Nesbitt Literary Fairy Tales are sometimes folktales reduced to a written form, and sometimes original stories containing the elements of folktales - in particular, elements like magical items, or articulate animals. In the late 18th and 19th Centuries various collections of folktales were compiled by men like the brothers Grimm. The work of the Brothers Grimm, Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Lang, Burton and the other collectors of traditional folktales will be covered on Eldrbarry's The Great Collections - currently under construction. But first in France, then in Denmark, and other places, original stories began to be composed and published.

Writing fairytales became such a fad in the late 19th century that many writers put their pens to creating them. But what is the "Golden Age"? America's Golden Age of Illustration was from 1875 to 1925. That same period has also been called the Golden Age of Children's books. It was a time when master story tellers were writing (and sometimes also illustrating) books that became classic literary stories. This page celebrates some of those who created fairytales. As master tellers, they used powerful language - and their stories were meant to read aloud. Their stories were well crafted with multi-dimensional characters. The first four are among my favorites, because they were such excellent storytellers. Howard Pyle (1853-1911) ( See my Pyle website ) American Illustrator who wrote and illustrated three books of Fairy Tales: two of which are out of print, and also did illustated version of the Robin Hood and King Arthur stories.

Pepper and Salt Out of Print Hans Christian Andersen: the Complete Fairy Tales and Stories by Virginia Haviland, Erik Christian Haugaard (Translator) Other writers of the Golden Age who wrote original fairy tales: The Victorian Fairytale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library) by Michael Patrick Hearn Paperback � Reprinted 2002 is a nice collection: Stories and poems by Dickens, Thackeray, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, Oscar Wilde, Christina Rossetti, W. B. Yeats, and many others are paired with pictures by some of the most celebrated illustrators of the Victorian era, including Arthur Rackham, Arthur Hughes, Max field Parrish, Walter Crane, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) did two collections of stories between 1888 and 1891: The Happy Prince and The House of Pomegranates. My favorite is "The Selfish Giant". These two books are Online.

Question: Which 19th century writer wrote a collection of stories for children which included 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Selfish Giant'?
Answer: Oscar Wilde