| Children's |
Summary
Author Notes
Flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde had a reputation that preceded him, especially in his early career. He was born to a middle-class Irish family (his father was a surgeon) and was trained as a scholarship boy at Trinity College, Dublin. He subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pater, whose aestheticism was taken to its radical extreme in Wilde's work. By 1879 he was already known as a wit and a dandy; soon after, in fact, he was satirized in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.
Largely on the strength of his public persona, Wilde undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, where he saw his play Vera open---unsuccessfully---in New York. His first published volume, Poems, which met with some degree of approbation, appeared at this time. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of an Irish lawyer, and within two years they had two sons. During this period he wrote, among others, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his only novel, which scandalized many readers and was widely denounced as immoral. Wilde simultaneously dismissed and encouraged such criticism with his statement in the preface, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."
In 1891 Wilde published A House of Pomegranates, a collection of fantasy tales, and in 1892 gained commercial and critical success with his play, Lady Windermere's Fan He followed this comedy with A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). During this period he also wrote Salome, in French, but was unable to obtain a license for it in England. Performed in Paris in 1896, the play was translated and published in England in 1894 by Lord Alfred Douglas and was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.
Lord Alfred was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who objected to his son's spending so much time with Wilde because of Wilde's flamboyant behavior and homosexual relationships. In 1895, after being publicly insulted by the marquess, Wilde brought an unsuccessful slander suit against the peer. The result of his inability to prove slander was his own trial on charges of sodomy, of which he was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor. During his time in prison, he wrote a scathing rebuke to Lord Alfred, published in 1905 as De Profundis. In it he argues that his conduct was a result of his standing "in symbolic relations to the art and culture" of his time. After his release, Wilde left England for Paris, where he wrote what may be his most famous poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), drawn from his prison experiences. Among his other notable writing is The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), which argues for individualism and freedom of artistic expression.
There has been a revived interest in Wilde's work; among the best recent volumes are Richard Ellmann's, Oscar Wilde and Regenia Gagnier's Idylls of the Marketplace , two works that vary widely in their critical assumptions and approach to Wilde but that offer rich insights into his complex character.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3 Up-Russell's impeccable graphic art brings new dimension to Wilde's tale of social inequality, sacrifice, and devotion. The statue of a hedonistic young prince who died young befriends a wayward swallow migrating to Egypt, and both sacrifice themselves to try and ease the suffering of the poor before finding a heavenly reward for their efforts. The many perspectives, asides, and subplots in the story, which can seem abrupt in a straight reading, are particularly well suited for this format. The panels make it obvious who is speaking and clarify their place in the story, resulting in a perfect union between narrative and art. The text is identical to the original, aside from a few minor abridgments that streamline the swallow's journeys and descriptions of Egypt. Skillfully using perspective, angle, and shadow, Russell portrays the emotions and humanity of the Happy Prince while never letting readers forget that he is a statue. A lovely adaptation.-Anna Haase Krueger, formerly at Antigo Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
While best known for The Picture of Dorian Gray and his plays, like The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde also penned popular fairy tales, which the Eisner Award-winning Russell has adapted into graphic novel form. "The Happy Prince" uses Wilde's own words for the text, so readers can still appreciate his elegant style. The melancholic story follows a swallow who befriends the statue of the Happy Prince, who was indeed happy when he lived a sheltered life. Now, however, the prince stands over the city as a statue and sees all the suffering. With the help of the swallow, he breaks down the pieces of himself, his rubies, sapphire, and gold, to feed the starving people. While much of the story is pensive or even outright sad, Wilde still pops in with some sharp satiric wit now and then. This is not a fairy tale with a happy ending, or at least what we would normally think of as a happy ending, but it certainly makes its point. Russell's sensitive, belle epoque-inspired artwork brings the story to life with a matched sensibility that makes other comics adaptations look clumsy. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Ray's lush, gold-tinted pictures seem particularly appropriate for Wilde's moving tale of the friendship between a gilded statue and a swallow and the compassion they share for the people suffering in the city below them. The abridged text retains the emotional power of the original; the use of the gold overlay emphasizes the vast differences between the self-indulgent wealthy and the suffering poor. From HORN BOOK 1995, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Happy when alive (""if pleasure be happiness""), the prince, now a gilded statue (???), weeps to see the misery of his city's poor. And so he persuades a late migrating sparrow to give the sufferers the ruby from his sword, the sapphires from his eyes, and at last the gold leaf from his body--until the statue, now ugly, is removed and melted down, and the bird, who has lingered too long in the north, dies at its feet. Oscar Wilde's sentimental tale, which ends with the dead bird and the statue's leaden heart being transported to heaven, is crassly illustrated with textured, collagish facades and garishly striated skies. Dismal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The fifth book of Russell's comics adaptations of Wilde's fairy tales contains one of the two best known of those sentimental Victorian bonbons, The Happy Prince. Whereas the other, The Selfish Giant, ends with the protagonist dead, the prince in this one is long gone to begin with, though his spirit haunts his huge memorial statue, from which he can see the city is impoverished. The spirit recruits a swallow to set things right for the sufferers by stripping the statue of its decorative treasures, until winter comes and you guessed it! the bird croaks. Russell's elegant, glowing, art nouveau-influenced illustration, which recalls both Maxfield Parrish and Arthur Rackham, fits the tale perfectly, and his reduction of the text mutes the cloying religiosity that for today's readers spoils so much that Wilde wrote. A work of adaptation that it's hard to think could be bettered.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
