Oscar Wilde - The Happy Prince and Other Stories

William Collins

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This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2015

Life & Times section © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary

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Source ISBN: 9780008110642

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008110659

Version: 2015-05-01

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER STORIES Oscar Wilde

Copyright

History of Collins

Life & Times

The Happy Prince and Other Stories

The Happy Prince

The Nightingale and The Rose

The Selfish Giant

The Devoted Friend

The Remarkable Rocket

A House of Pomegranates

The Young King

The Birthday of the Infanta

The Fisherman and His Soul

The Star-Child

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

About the Publisher

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon . Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner ; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress , making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Oscar Wilde had an erudite way with words and is often quoted to this day. He was known as a sharp wit, delivering lines that cut through conversation making him at once popular and vilified, depending on the nature of those at the receiving end. Sadly for Wilde, it was his enemies that got the better of him. At a time when it was illegal for men to have sexual relations with other men, Wilde was imprisoned and exiled for his sexual preferences.

Wilde wrote only one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray , as well as poetry and short stories, but he was first and foremost a playwright, and a very successful one at that. He is perhaps best known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest and his most well-known poem is The Ballad of Reading Gaol , which he wrote following his incarceration.

Wilde was born into a privileged Dublin family. He had a fairly uneventful childhood, but performed very well at university, studying at Magdalen College, Oxford. It was as a student that he began to use his high intellect to put others down, and as a result many of his peers took a dislike to him. He also began to cultivate an image for himself that could be described as outrageously camp, in both appearance and conduct. It was the behaviour of homosexuals such as Wilde that led to the word ‘gay’ earning its modern meaning, because people began using the term in describing this tendency for gaiety in demeanour. It was a euphemism that mutated over time. Needless to say, Wilde’s effeminate and showy image, although entertaining to some, was thought immoral by polite Victorian society. For every person who celebrated his outlandish posturing there was someone else who wanted him to fall from grace.