The Fairy Tales
by Oscar Wilde 
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Nine tales include "The Remarkable Rocket," "The Nightingale and the Rose," and "The Selfish Giant."Tags
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Richer, more sophisticated, and more valuable than Andersen's stories, but having some things in common with them, such as a pervasive theme of humility and sacrifice as service to God. I read some of these as a child, but re-reading them as an adult is a whole 'nother experience, and one I recommend. This edition would be the one I'd recommend, as the illustrations are indeed very pretty and the font is clear, the pages heavy, etc. Otoh, I'm sure you can read the tales for free from Project Gutenberg, too, if you aren't as lucky as I to find this in the library.
I picked this wonderful book up while in Ireland for vaction. What can you say, Wilde wrote some of the best Fairy Tales for children ever. Beautiful book, buy a copy and give it to your children, better yet read it to them!
The stories of Oscar Wilde speak for themselves but I love this beautiful edition illustrated by Michael Hauge.
CONTENTS: 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
GoodREads Review: "Oscar Wilde originally wrote these fairy tales for his two sons. The tales span the range of human emotions with a sense of wonder and romance that have ensured them an enduring place in the hearts of children and adults."
Literary awards: Locus Award Nominee for Best Illustrated or Art Book (2020)
GoodREads Review: "Oscar Wilde originally wrote these fairy tales for his two sons. The tales span the range of human emotions with a sense of wonder and romance that have ensured them an enduring place in the hearts of children and adults."
Literary awards: Locus Award Nominee for Best Illustrated or Art Book (2020)
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Author Information
1,762+ Works 120,767 Members
Flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde had a reputation that preceded him, especially in his early career. He was born to a middle-class Irish family (his father was a surgeon) and was trained as a scholarship boy at Trinity College, Dublin. He subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John show more Ruskin and Walter Pater, whose aestheticism was taken to its radical extreme in Wilde's work. By 1879 he was already known as a wit and a dandy; soon after, in fact, he was satirized in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience. Largely on the strength of his public persona, Wilde undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, where he saw his play Vera open---unsuccessfully---in New York. His first published volume, Poems, which met with some degree of approbation, appeared at this time. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of an Irish lawyer, and within two years they had two sons. During this period he wrote, among others, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his only novel, which scandalized many readers and was widely denounced as immoral. Wilde simultaneously dismissed and encouraged such criticism with his statement in the preface, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." In 1891 Wilde published A House of Pomegranates, a collection of fantasy tales, and in 1892 gained commercial and critical success with his play, Lady Windermere's Fan He followed this comedy with A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). During this period he also wrote Salome, in French, but was unable to obtain a license for it in England. Performed in Paris in 1896, the play was translated and published in England in 1894 by Lord Alfred Douglas and was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Lord Alfred was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who objected to his son's spending so much time with Wilde because of Wilde's flamboyant behavior and homosexual relationships. In 1895, after being publicly insulted by the marquess, Wilde brought an unsuccessful slander suit against the peer. The result of his inability to prove slander was his own trial on charges of sodomy, of which he was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor. During his time in prison, he wrote a scathing rebuke to Lord Alfred, published in 1905 as De Profundis. In it he argues that his conduct was a result of his standing "in symbolic relations to the art and culture" of his time. After his release, Wilde left England for Paris, where he wrote what may be his most famous poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), drawn from his prison experiences. Among his other notable writing is The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), which argues for individualism and freedom of artistic expression. There has been a revived interest in Wilde's work; among the best recent volumes are Richard Ellmann's, Oscar Wilde and Regenia Gagnier's Idylls of the Marketplace , two works that vary widely in their critical assumptions and approach to Wilde but that offer rich insights into his complex character. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Oscar Wilde has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Fairy Tales
- Disambiguation notice
- Contents: The happy prince - The nightingale and the rose - The selfish giant - The devoted friend - The remarkable rocket - The young king - The birthday of the infanta - The fisherman and his soul - The star-child.
D... (show all)o not combine with the P. Craig Russell comics adaptations.
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- 471
- Popularity
- 64,388
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.28)
- Languages
- English, German, Portuguese, Russian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 33
- ASINs
- 6
