The Happy Prince and Other Tales
Written by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Charles Robinson
When Oscar Wilde became a father, he wanted to offer his son a few good stories for children. Unfortunately, none of the books on the market suited Wilde's exquisite taste, so he decided to write a book of stories for kids himself.
His wife Costance very likely helped him at work, at least with the editing part (after all, she already had some experience with writing fairy tales) but we'll never know how much of her wit is in the five tales presented below.
(frontispiece)
Anyway, Oscar Wilde definitely infused some of his best intellectual powers in this work which, by the way, was never popular among children. But it's still a masterpiece and we will explore it with illustrations by Charles Robinson. The illustrator made great effort as well. He didn't just create pictures of the scenes from the tales but approached to the project as a decorative artist and designer so the book really shines out of the average stuff on the bookshelves.
This book is dedicated to Carlos Blacker. Oscar Wilde described him as 'always the truest of friends and most sympathetic of companions'.
We can instantly notice that all stories are pretty long. This is not usual for literature for children.
Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Stories was first published in 1888 and already reprinted six times before we got the version from 1913, published by Duck Worth & Co from London, sometimes mentioned also as a 'special edition'. This is the one we'll use.
All illustrations and decorations will be presented in the same order as in the book. This could very likely be done in a more organized and aesthetic way but we intend to provide everything done by Charles Robinson and with 'raw data' you can at least do what you want. Complete work is in the Public Domain anyway.
The Happy Prince
A swallow befriends a statue of the late prince who never experienced anything sad. Now, with his tall stature, he sees a lot of suffering and he wants to help at least a bit. He gives gold and precious stones from his body to the swallow. Their good actions have almost no impact and they both end in the garbage. From there they are taken to heaven.
***
The Nightingale and the Rose
A student wants to impress a girl and give her a beautiful red rose. He hears that he can get the most beautiful red rose if a nightingale is willing to sing through the night with its heart pierced with a rose thorn. A nightingale actually sacrifices his life and the beautiful rose is given to the girl who doesn't care about it because she had already got jewels from another boy.
***
The Selfish Giant
A giant owns a beautiful garden with fruit and flowers. While he is away for years, children play there all the time. When he returns, he builds a wall to keep them out. But then a winter comes to the garden and nothing grows anymore. After some time a giant is visited by a bird who shows him that children found a hole to get in the garden again. With children, spring returns and the giant decides to give the garden to the children. Many years later he dies and goes to heaven where he realizes that one of the kids who played in the garden was Jesus.
***
The Devoted Friend
This is a story about a poor gardener and a wealthy miller. The gardener is a nice but naive man who believes that the miller is his friend but is constantly exploited by him. He gives him a broken wheelbarrow and wants countless favors in return. The situation goes so far that the gardener loses his tools, his garden, and eventually his life. At his funeral, the miller concludes that his generosity only caused trouble so he won't be nervous anymore.
***
A royal wedding will be celebrated with fireworks and one of the rockets has extremely high expectations. It believes everybody will be astonished by its explosion. While bragging about its abilities it becomes wet and eventually can't explode. It's thrown in the garbage where it is unable to impress the animals until it's found by boys who eventually light it. It explodes in the light of the day so nobody notices it.
This is all in the presented edition of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
The book was printed by Hazell, Watson and Viney, LD., London and Aylesbury.
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