The Happy Prince and other tales

The book holds five stories: The Happy Prince, The Remarkable Rocket, The Devoted Friend, The Selfish Giant and The Nightingale and the Rose. Wilde had already made his name as a poet and a wit when the collection appeared in 1888, and it was his first book of prose fiction.

The first of them tells of a swallow left behind when his flock flew to Egypt for the winter. He rests against the monument of the late Happy Prince, who had never known sorrow, having spent his life in a palace where it was not allowed inside, and the Prince asks him to take the ruby from his sword hilt and the sapphires from his eyes for the poor of the town.

Wilde wrote the stories to be read at bedtime, and they have usually been valued for the morals they carry, which is part of why schools have kept them in circulation. They have also been adapted for the screen, including a three-part series made for Channel 4 in 2003 out of the second, third and fourth stories, and they are generally counted among the classics of writing for children.