I was very sad and I read it with tears in my eyes.
This is exactly heart warming story! ( )

amazon PD: Nine haunting fairy tales: The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant, The Devoted Friend, The Remarkable Rocket, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Star Child, The Fisherman and his Soul - Oscar Wilde made up these very special fairy tales for his own children. They loved to hear about the happy prince who was not really as happy as he seemed, and the selfish giant who learned to love the little children he had once hated.

Apparently Oscar Wilde wrote two collections of fairy tales, this being his first in 1888, just a few years after his children were born, when he was still struggling financially and yet to become a famous playwright. The stories have a Hans Anderson feel to them. It's a short collection and easily read in an hour or two, with some beautiful color prints in later editions (see Internet Archive), plus a whole bunch of adaptations in the 20th century to film, opera etc... If your a fan of fairy tales three of them are pretty good: "The Happy Prince", "The Selfish Giant" and "The Remarkable Rocket". The two others are probably too moralistic for modern tastes.

"The Happy Prince" is typical of 19th century English fiction dealing with poor but good people who are given a second chance by some miracle of wealth re-distribution (the little bird of socialism) - it would have found a receptive audience with the rising middle classes (see also much of Dicken's fiction). Yet it seems late to the scene to be anything more than a beautiful period piece. "The Selfish Giant" is sort of a Dicken's "Christmas Carol" about stingy grownups whose cold stone hearts are melted by the spirit of Christ and giving. Again, typical genre fair by this time, but still well written and moving. Finally "The Remarkable Rocket" is a wonderful psychological profile of narcissism and selfishness. Well worth reading today and probably the story with longest legs. ( )

A statue of a privileged prince develops a social conscience and a swallow intends to pause just a moment to assist him. Together they conspire to bring a modicum of contentment, financial security, and compassion to the beleaguered poor of a nameless city in northern Europe and both receive their rewards in a heavenly paradise. In this morality tale originally intended for the childlike rather than the child, Wilde addresses issues of social injustice, the loss of innocence, and the redemptive power of love.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/962081.htm...

I was familiar with two of the stories, The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant, from children's anthologies, but the others (The Nightingale And The Rose, The Devoted Friend and The Remarkable Rocket) were all new to me.

I'm not actually certain that I would give these stories to a child to read - they are all so very sad. The one with the happiest ending is The Selfish Giant, and even then he dies, if not quite as tragically as the protagonists of the other stories! Knowing what I do about Wilde's own life and death, I was on the lookout for reflections in the stories: but in fact what there is is rather surprising - The Selfish Giant is an explicitly Christian allegory, and The Remarkable Rocket, full of his own pretension, arrogance and snobbery, eventually terminally expends his considerable talents and energies in such a way that nobody notices.

These are uncomfortable stories, and should only be read by children (and perhaps even adults) under strict supervision. ( )