Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (born October 16, 1854, Dublin, Ireland—died November 30, 1900, Paris, France) was an Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose enduring fame rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In his comedies he proved himself to be a master of the epigram. He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake, and he was the object of notorious civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895–97). Despite his fall from society’s grace at the end of his life, Wilde came to be regarded as the personification of wit and sophistication.

The first edition was illustrated by Walter Crane (15 August 1845 – 14 March 1915) . A contemporary of Wilde's, Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children's books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international socialist movement.

Oscar Wilde

Walter Crane

Illustration by Walter Crane from The Selfish Giant

19th century edition of The Selfish Giant

Illustrator Walter Crane

The Selfish Giant was one of six fairy tales published in 1888 in a volume called The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Wilde's complex and controversial life reflected some parallels with the Giant in his story in his conversion to Christianity late in life. On his deathbed Wilde was baptized and received into the Catholic Church in 1900. He wrote this Christian fable for children while his own two sons were very young.

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