‘The Canterville Ghost’ by Oscar Wilde

I read this story when I was about 12, and loved it, reading it several more times in my teens. The premise is simple – a wealthy American family moves into Canterville Chase, a historic house, despite it being haunted, and despite everyone warning him against it, including Lord Canterville. However the sensible Americans refuse to be scared by this ghost, and ignore his increasingly desperate hauntings, even going so far as to recommend to him a special product to oil his clanking chains, and regularly cleaning up the ancient bloodstains (the ghost is reduced to using the children’s paintbox in his attempts to replace the stains).

The poor ghost dwells on his past glorious hauntings and becomes increasingly despondent at his lack of purpose, but is rescued by the kindly daughter.

Perhaps Wilde wrote it as a satirical antidote to the obsession with the supernatural, the ghostly, and spiritualism at the end of the 19^th century. Certainly he was having fun with it, subverting all the usual ghost story telling conventions.

It’s a fun story, not too demanding, and ideal for reading to young children or for reading when you’re not well. And it ends with True Love. A great introduction to the charm and wit of Oscar Wilde.

First published in two parts in The Court and Society Review, 1887. You can find it here

‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde

I wanted to finish with one of the stories that kicked off my love of the form. I still adore Saki’s short stories, and would name a cat after his mischievously wicked character Clovis. Saki’s sense of fun is unparalleled. But I think that Wilde and his ‘children’s stories’ pip Saki to the post (not that the stories should be restricted to children). There’s wit and vivid imagery in Wilde’s stories, but also a moral heart, and an anger at the state of the world. I read The Happy Prince and Other Stories when I was little, and then read them again, and had the stories on audio tape, when my daughter was young. I remembered them clearly. Neither my daughter or I can listen to ‘The Infanta’s Birthday’, it is far too painful, and although I like the imperious ‘Remarkable Rocket’ and the tragic nightingale giving her lifeblood for the wastrel lover in ‘The Nightingale and The Rose’, I think ‘The Happy Prince’ gets my vote.

A golden statue and a swallow, who plucks off the Prince’s gold and jewels and flies them to the student in the garret, the mother in the poor house and the match girl who has dropped her wares, all the time dreaming of his trip south to the warmth of Egypt. I think of the swallow in this story every time I see one swooping over my garden, and I think of the most precious things in the city, a leaden heart and a dead bird. Blimey, Wilde knew how to tug at the heartstrings.

From The Happy Prince and Other Stories, first published in 1888, and now widely published. Available to read online here

‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde

Every two or three years I read this out to 350 pupils in our school Chapel, usually coming up to Christmas. Our Chaplain reserves Wednesday mornings for talks and musical recitals rather than the standard service, and when I tell the school they are about to hear a children’s story I can see their scepticism. But then the simple and compelling narrative starts, and even the 18-year-olds succumb to its magic.

Published in The Happy Prince and other tales,1888

‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde

I always worry, when I re-read this story every few years, that I will have outgrown it, but so far its effect on me has only become more textured and stronger overall. It is – unambiguously, I suppose – a children’s story; Wilde wrote it for his son Cyril, and these days I really hear and am moved by the fatherly tones and concerns in it. Wilde was probably my first proper literary love, and at some point the story also became more poignant and fascinating for me because of a growing awareness I had of how deeply and kind of presciently it relates to developments in his own life. He memorably refers back to it in De Profundis, just after this award-winning motion picture of a paragraph:

“I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round Magdalen’s narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all.”

But my love of this story predates my love of Wilde, and goes back to the very beginnings of my love of reading. I don’t remember the details of how the story first struck me, only that it struck me with great force, great emotional force. A scene from a bit later in the timeline of my relationship with the story comes to mind. Towards the end of secondary school, I read it out to my Philosophy class. We were considering the question ‘What is art?’ and the teacher had invited any of us who wanted to to present an exhibit to the class. I didn’t read it very well – I stumbled on a few words, and even made, so as to pre-empt sniggers, an awkward spur-of-the-moment substitution of a perhaps unfortunately dated expression. I didn’t bring out the different voices especially either. But when I looked up at the end, there were tears running down the teacher’s face.

First collected in The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888. Available on Wikisource