Edited with an Introduction by Ian Small.
School Library Journal Gr 7 Up Lovers of Oscar Wilde's stories will delight in this new illustrated version of The Canterville Ghost if the picture book format does not keep them from finding it. Wilde's story of an American family who moves into Canterville Chase and annoys a weary ghost with their lack of belief in him is a wry commentary on the ways of British nobility and of their hard-headed American cousins. Like many of Wilde's tales, this one is filled with sophisticated allusions to his social and political milieu, but ends as sentimental romance. Zwerger's wry pictures highlight this tone beautifully. Her toothless ghost is round and comical, as would suit a ghost whom no one fears, and her heroine, Virginia, is young and sweetly boyish. All of the illustrations are set against misty gray watercolor backgrounds except for the climactic scene, echoed on the front cover, in which the tiny huntsmen on the wallpaper call out to Virginia to ``Go Back.'' This will make a fine read-aloud for audiences of secondary students who are prepared to savor Wilde's ironic humor and Zwerger's delicate watercolors. Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie

The Complete Short Fiction

Short stories

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900; Small, Ian

London ; New York: Penguin Books

Ladybird Books Ltd

Penguin Books Ltd

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Penguin classics, London ; New York, 1994

Reissue, 2003

Inherent obscured text

Includes bibliographical references (p. xxix-[xxxi]).

This volume collects together the masterpieces that appeared during Wilde's earliest revolutions as an artist, the stories which first made his name as a writer of fiction. It includes the complete texts of The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), A House of Pomegranates (1891) and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891), together with his six Poems in Prose and 'The Portrait of Mr W.H.', inspired by 'the onlie Begetter' of Shakespeare's Sonnets, loved by Wilde 'as one should love all things, not wisely but too well'. Fairy tales, ghost stories, detective fiction, comedies of manners - these stories find Wilde at work subverting late-Victorian expectations and trying out his own distinctive forms of melodrama and parody. They defy our modern expectations too in the brilliance of their vision and paradox and in the audacity of their wit.

Presents the complete short fiction of nineteenth-century Irish author Oscar Wilde, including fairy tales, ghost stories, mysteries, and comedies of manners, and includes an introductory essay that examines Wilde's life and work

Nine tales include "The Remarkable Rocket," "The Nightingale and the Rose," and "The Selfish Giant."

xxxv, 279 p. ; 20 cm
Includes bibliographical references (p. xxix-[xxxi])

2023-06-28