author of the happy prince and other tales

This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. 3 Never did any man seem to write more deliberately for the smallest possible audience or in a style more artificial, and that audience contained nobody it seemed but a few women of fashion who invited guests to listen to his conversation and two or three young painters who continued the tradition of Rossetti. I remember the reviews were generally very hostile to his work, for Wilde’s aesthetic movement was a recent event and London journalists were still in a rage with his knee breeches, his pose - and it may be with his bitter speeches about themselves while men of letters saw nothing in his prose but imitations of Walter Pater or in his verse but imitations of Swinburne and Rossetti. My mind went back to the late eighties when I was but just arrived in London with the manuscript of my first book of poems, 2 and when nothing of Wilde’s had been published except his poems and ‘The Happy Prince’. When I was lecturing in Boston a little before the War an Arab refugee told me that Oscar Wilde’s works had been translated into Arabian and that his Happy Prince and Other Tales had been the most popular: ‘They are our own literature,’ he said. I had already heard that ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ was much read in the Young China party 1 and for long after I found myself meditating upon the strange destiny of certain books. This beautiful collectors’ edition with original watercolour illustrations and decorative motifs from the 1913 edition by Charles Robinson and an introduction by Wilde expert Michèle Mendelssohn is certain to surprise and delight adults and children alike.When I was lecturing in Boston a little before the War an Arab refugee told me that Oscar Wilde’s works had been translated into Arabian and that his Happy Prince and Other Tales had been the most popular: ‘They are our own literature,’ he said. By turns moving and funny, they gently teach free thinking rather than giving prescriptive lessons. How can you set the world on fire? asks ‘The Remarkable Rocket’.Wilde’s stories have given pleasure to generations of readers. Can you have too much compassion? asks ‘The Devoted Friend’. How do you win friends (and avoid alienating people)? asks ‘The Selfish Giant’. How do you get what you need? asks ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’. Featuring princesses, ogres and talking animals, the questions they pose are as pertinent now as they were at the turn of the century. Oscar Wilde’s children’s stories explore timeless themes of good and evil, freedom and responsibility, love and death, beauty and self-sacrifice.

Author of the happy prince and other tales