Wilde, Oscar.

The Happy Prince. David Nutt, 1888

May Rawlinson, inscription; H. Bradley Martin, bookplate

Mason 313; Ellmann, pp.282; Complete Letters, p.352

One thousand copies of this book for children were issued in May 1888, all five stories appearing here for the first time. In a letter to G.H. Kersley on 15 June 1888 Wilde wrote: "I am very pleased that you like my stories. They are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into a fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness." It was the success of this work that established his reputation as an author, the Athenaeum comparing him to Hans Andersen.