HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.’In ‘The Happy Prince’ a statue – jewelled and opulent – keeps careful watch over the city and its inhabitants. Enlisting the help of a swallow, his selfless...
“The Happy Prince and Other Stories” is a collection of whimsical, fantastical, and deeply moral tales by Oscar Wilde, the renowned nineteenth century Irish poet and playwright. Though best known for his plays and the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Wilde was an accomplished and talented author of children’s stories and fairy tales. This collection includes many of his most enduring short stories: the sad and beautiful “The Happy Prince”, where a lonely swallow, left behind by his flock,...
A cruel joke at a country fair goes too far when a drunken laborer auctions off his wife and child to the highest bidder. So begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy's gripping tale of a man's rise and fall amid the natural beauty and human brutality of a rural English community.First published serially in 1886, the novel was praised by critics for its realism and poetic style. Most agreed, however, that its plot hinges upon unlikely turns of events. Hardy replied, «It is not...
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘The movements of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.’When Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser gets drunk and sells his wife at a country fair, his life will never be the same. Eighteen years later, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge to find that Henchard has become Mayor. Although he’s spent most of his life attempting to repent for his actions, he remains a...
Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to belief in 'art for art's sake', to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design. Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment,...
HarperCollins is proud to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young… If it was only the other way!'Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness,...
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.’Including some of Oscar Wilde’s most well-known and infamous plays, Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, this collection of the infamous writer’s works displays his brilliant, quick wit to its full glory. Wilde’s pithy...
Immerse yourself in the world of Oscar Wilde with the collection: «The Plays of Oscar Wilde.» Containing all of Wilde’s plays, this collection is a must-have for every bookshelf. Oscar Wilde was born in mid-1800’s Dublin to highly intellectual parents. He found a niche in the growing trend of aestheticism and was mentored by Walter Pater and John Ruskin. Although he dabbled in short stories and poems at the beginning of his career, Wilde was taken seriously after his first novel «The Picture of...