The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a collection of fairy tales that consists of the titular piece, “The Selfish Giant,” “The Devoted Friend,” “The Young King,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Fisherman and His Soul,” “The Star-Child,” “The Remarkable Rocket," and “The Birthday of the Infanta,” was written by Oscar Wilde and first published in 1888. Wilde was notorious for promoting “art for art’s sake,” but chose to write these tales in the didactic form of the fairy tale. This form allowed Wilde to explore themes of importance to him, such as homosexuality, morality, aestheticism, English socioeconomic realities, and more.
The tales seem to have been modeled after Hans Christian...
