This website is dedicated to everything related to fairy tales. Expect articles about fairy tales (including fables, stories for children, and nursery rhymes), their authors, and illustrators.
Most of all, expect a lot of magic!
This post will stay at the top of the blog as ‘sticky’. In time, it will transform into a comprehensive table of contents.
The Grimm Brothers – Facts You Probably Don’t Know
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm are famous for their collection of fairy tales. It was first published in 1812 as Children’s and Household Tales and went through seven editions during its lifetime. Today, it’s by far the best-known book with fairy tales featuring Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, The Town Musicians of Bremen, and many other classic works for children.
King of the Golen Mountain by Max Teschemacher
Despite the worldwide popularity of the Brothers Grimm, most people don’t know much about their lives and works. This article will address numerous misconceptions, so you will be better informed and able to use your newly acquired knowledge to your full advantage. Let’s dive into their magical world!
Harsh Life, Hard Work
Jakob and Wilhelm were born to a jurist with a well-established business and a mother who was the daughter of a city councilman. They were the oldest surviving sons in a family with eight boys and a girl. Three of their brothers died before they reached the age of two. Kids were schooled at home by private tutors and lived happily until their father died of pneumonia.
The Land of Plenty, postcard by Oskar Herrfurth
This led to significant financial hardship for the family. They suddenly became poor and lost their large home and servants. They then had to rely on their mother’s family for financial support. When a year later the grandfather died as well, the brothers had to leave the rest of the family and move to Kassel. They enrolled in a gymnasium, paid for by their aunt.
Portraits of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm
After that, they slowly built their positions with hard work and renunciation, taking responsibility for other family members, including their brother Ludwig, who became a painter and made the first illustrations for their most famous book.
The pattern of riches-to-rags-to-riches appears in more than half of their stories for children, but it is not the only pattern.
Injustice
Fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers are characterized by another recognizable element: the pattern of injustice. They experienced it from an early age. It followed them for the rest of their lives. Let’s highlight a few examples:
Father dies, and the young children have to take the responsibility of adults.
Despite hard work and top achievements (they both graduated as the best in the class), they couldn’t get scholarships because they belonged to a lower social class. Instead, they had to find jobs. Jacob abandoned his studies to work as an assistant in Paris and earn enough money to feed his family.
Cinderella (Aschenputtel) by Georg Albert Strodel
Both brothers became librarians at the King of Westfalia, where they were overlooked when the post of the chief librarian was available.
They became professors in Gottingen but lost their jobs and income during political unrest.
Absent Father, Large Families, and Sacrifice
For most of his life, Jacob was responsible for other family members. He also helped Wilhelm, who suffered from poor health, missed a year of school due to scarlet fever, and had to visit a sanatorium to heal his heart and respiratory conditions. Sacrifice is another pattern in their fairy tales. Another characteristic is the presence of a family with many boys and a single girl. This is just like the Grimm family.
We can find six brothers and a daughter in Six Swans, seven brothers and a daughter in Seven Ravens, and Snow White, who takes care of seven dwarfs. The theme of sacrifice appears in dozens of other fairy tales from their collection, but all of them share almost the same trigger: an absent father.
Seven Swans by Willy Juttner
The death of Jakob’s and Wilhelm’s father undoubtedly marked their lives. It’s no coincidence that so many of their fairy tales start with one of the following situations:
The King dies, and his immature children are forced to find a way to survive in an unhospitable world.
A poor family is suffering from hunger with an incompetent father and cruel mother (in most cases, replaced by a stepmother).
Mother dies, father remarries and gets out of the picture so the new wife can take control of the household, favoring her children from before and humiliating her stepchildren.
Kids are so poor they have to leave their homes and look for any kind of job to put some food on their plates.
All Kinds of Fur by Rudolf Geissler
But wait! Didn’t the brothers Grimm collect the tales from folk tradition? Aren’t those patterns just coincidental with their life experiences?
Closer to Writers than Collectors
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting fairy tales, fables, and other similar stories at the suggestion of Clemens Brentano. Brentano believed in a united Germany, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was divided into approximately 200 kingdoms, counties, cities with special status, and other entities. Brothers Grimm shared Bretano’s views on the situation. They were pretty confident that the Germans could live in a stronger, more centralized state if they recognized their shared history and language. This could be achieved through shared myths and stories.
Vintage book covers of Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Blanche Fisher Laite (left) and Noel Pocock (right)
Jakob and Wilhelm started collecting both. But they were not traveling across the country looking for old storytellers, as many believe. They didn’t have the financial resources to do that, and they also wanted to accomplish as much as possible in the shortest time possible. Instead of working on the terrain, they preferred to talk to people from the neighborhood. In this manner, they collected dozens of fairy tales from their neighbors. One of these neighbors was Henriette Dorothea Dortchen Wild, who later became Wilhelm’s wife and the mother of their four children. They didn’t know that the fairy tales they were writing had often been published many years before they were born. These tales did not belong to the German tradition (most had already been printed in Basile’s Pentamerone), nor were they written by unknown authors. Many were written by well-known authors like Hans Christian Andersen.
The brothers also didn’t care about the suitability of their collection for children because they were targeting academic circles. After publishing, a few people suggested softening or excluding some of the stories from the collection because they have tremendous potential to teach important lessons to children.
Vintage book covers of Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Arthur Rackham (left) and Monro Scott Orr (right)
So Wilhelm rewrote most fairy tales to make them appropriate for kids. He added aesthetic descriptions, deleted allusions to sexual activities, but never really bothered with violence. In Sleeping Beauty, he even added the part with princes dying on thorns while trying to rescue the sleeping princess.
The Brothers Grimm’s collection was not an immediate commercial success. In fact, they had serious problems convincing the publisher of the second edition. Their contemporary Ludwig Bechstein, who published a very similar collection with numerous fairy tales with the same titles and plots but written more tailored to the audience of the time, was considerably more successful.
Vintage book covers of various myths and legends by the Grimm Brothers
Anyway, today we can say that Jakob and Wilhelm made a much bigger impact. They were awarded several honorary doctorates for their writing. Apart from fairy tales, they published myths, sagas, and the first volumes of the German dictionary.
More vintage book covers by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm
Their fairy tales became a part of the school curriculum and were heavily abused during both world wars while German nationalism was on the rise. They were translated into all major languages, although often adapted and censored. Now, it is regarded as the second most influential book in the Western Hemisphere after the Bible. The collection made its way into popular media.
Did you know that in computer science, the term “breadcrumbs” refers to user interface elements such as internal links on websites? The term comes from the story of Hansel and Gretel.
Did you know that modern medicine uses terms such as the Cinderella complex and the Sleeping Beauty syndrome, both of which are taken from the Grimm’s fairy tales?
While many modern parents don’t read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to their children because they believe they are too violent, a growing number of experts in children’s psychology believe exactly the opposite – they provide a perfect opportunity to learn about the injustice and cruelty of the real world in the safe environment of their parents’ laps. On condition, of course, they are presented at the right time in the right way.
But this is a theme for another debate.
If you find this article useful, please share it with your friends and followers.
Bremen Town Musicians – a classic story with invaluable lessons
The timeless messages of the classic fairy tale, The Town Musicians of Bremen, by the Grimm Brothers, have stood the test of time. It’s a story about respect, cooperation, and bravery.
Illustrations by Leonard Leslie Brooke (left), and Harry Rountree (right)
This fairy tale is a bit different than most classic stories for kids. It has animals in the main roles, and all the people in the story are presented in a bad light. Of course, we need to understand the narrative approach – animals are just examples of individuals who have lost their positions in society and are trying to find a new meaning in the slowly but surely approaching ends of their lives.
All the chosen animals also carry rich symbolism, so we can perceive them as characteristics, functions, or traits in a dramatic expression of social conditions. To make them more relatable, they picked animals that most of us are familiar with. This makes them feel more at home. There are dozens of similar stories with different numbers, sometimes up to six animals, but all of them always belong to livestock and poultry. A bull, a duck, or a sheep are just a few examples. All of them can also be associated with positive and negative traits that give depth and humanity to the characters.
Different versions of this story are found in the folklore of many countries all over the world, from Norway to South Africa. In these cases, Bremen can be replaced with another fictional or real location, or left unspecified.
Illustration by Paula Ebner (left) and postcard by Oskar Herrfurth (right)
Such a scholarly approach is even more understandable if we know the circumstances in which this story was written. Let’s explore a few interesting facts about the Bremen Town Musicians and try to learn a lesson or two by the way.
Short Summary of Bremen Town Musicians
A donkey becomes old, slow, and weak. He realizes his master will get rid of him, so he leaves him and goes toward Bremen, where he plans to become a town musician. On his way, he meets a dog with a very similar perspective, and the animals join their forces.
Illustrations by Frederick Richardson (left) and Blanche Fisher Wright Laite (right)
Before the end of the day, a cat and a rooster become members of the group as well.
Night comes before they reach Bremen, so they try to find shelter in the woods. There, they see a hut with a few robbers inside. They have their loot and a lot of food on the table. Animals make some kind of pyramid and look like some kind of monster. They scare the robbers out of the hut.
Illustratons by Paul Hey (left), Paul Friedrich Meyerheim (middle), and postcard by Oskar Herrfurth (right)
They enjoy food, and each one of them finds a place to sleep.
Illustrations by Monro Scott Orr (left) and Paula Ebner (right)
Later, one of the robbers comes back. It’s dark, so he tries to make a fire in the heath. But there is the cat who jumps into his face, hissing and scratching. The robber escapes through the doors, but the dog that lies behind bites him. In the yard, a donkey kicks him, and for the grand finale, a rooster comes at him from the roof.
Postcard by Felix Elsner (left) and illustration by Wilhelm Schaefer (right)
When the robber returns to his gang, he explains that different monsters attacked him. Others, seeing his wounds, decide never to return there. The Town Musicians of Bremen stayed there and enjoyed their lives without ever reaching Bremen.
Why Bremen?
Most fairy tales don’t say exactly where they take place, but this one tells us that animals go to Bremen. Bremen has been around for over 1200 years and has managed to stay pretty independent for most of that time. It was one of the few cities where an ordinary man had more chances to prosper than in others. For a long time, it was one of the main ports for Europeans, particularly Germans, heading to America in search of a better life. It’s still the capital of the German state, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, made up of just two cities: Bremen and Bremerhaven.
It’s very likely that the donkey in the story opted for Bremen because of its image of the place, where you can get a second chance. Or more chances than in other places. Or, any chance at all. Choosing a musical career is not surprising as well. In medieval Europe, traveling musical bands with animals playing simple instruments were quite popular, and Bremen is a town with a long tradition of festivals and similar events.
Is this story so different than other classic fairy tales?
At first glance, the Grimm Brothers’ The Bremen Town Musicians looks quite different. Yet it’s still a story where one (or more) characters try to improve their life. Finding partners, finding treasures, and improving social status are major goals of all the best stories, and this one is no exception. Members of this unusual group leave their homes (the standard beginning of countless fairy tales), find partners (in this case, friends, not spouses), and earn a fortune (the robbers’ hut is full of food and stolen stuff).
Like in all great stories, the protagonists had to conquer mighty opponents and break at least some rules. In this scenario, they have the opportunity to escape the constraints imposed by society’s expectations (in this case, facing a certain death) and defeat a group of robbers. The robbers are stronger and armed, but the animals are smart and work as a team. Cunningness defeats brute force again. There are no kings or queens in this tale, but the animals clearly conquer their very own kingdom where they intend to live happily ever after.
To make our case even more convincing, let’s borrow, for instance, an observation from Maria Tatar, who noticed that all four animals tested their possible places for sleeping just like Snow White or Goldilocks checked several beds before choosing one for resting.
The story of second chances
We can explain the popularity of the Bremen Town Musicians in different contexts. One of them is definitely the critical view of a capitalist society in which people are valued only for their usefulness. When the donkey can’t carry as much burden as before, it’s best to make glue of it. Metaphorically speaking, we can clearly see an aging human in him.
Yes, we can say that everybody’s time is up one day, but the donkey refuses this simplistic approach. He is willing to pursue a second chance and at least try to do something else. If he can’t pull the cart, he might play a lute. While we may see him as a rebel at first, we soon learn he is not alone, which brings us to another valuable lesson. Animals can act as a group. They join their abilities to chase away the robbers and find a place to live. Robbers, on the other hand, take an ‘everybody for himself’ approach and lose everything.
Illustrations by Leonard Leslie Brooke
One obvious message of the fairy tale is that teamwork triumphs over selfishness. Another is probably the importance of maintaining optimism and focusing on the future.
All used images are in the Public Domain or used by permission of the author.
When you face trouble, do you try to see it as a challenge and an opportunity?
Beauty and the Beast is an extremely popular fairy tale with hundreds of variations. While it is one of the rare classic tales with attributed authorship, a closer examination reveals a number of shared elements with many other timeless stories.
Beauty and the Beast by Anne Anderson
The Brothers Grimm believed every fairy tale is actually an echo of an ancient myth. The narrative of a beautiful girl, isolated from the world and at the mercy of a beast, is not as original as it might seem, as it appears in not just one but several myths.
So join us in exploring various Greek and Roman myths, with brief summaries and comparisons!
Summary of Beauty and the Beast
Here are the main elements:
Beauty (Belle in French) is the name of the youngest and most beautiful of three daughters.
Her father is a merchant. When he asks his daughters what they want as gifts from his upcoming trip, the two eldest wish for clothes and jewelry, but the youngest wants only a simple rose.
The merchant finds a rose in a mysterious garden, where he encounters the Beast.
Beast is willing to spare him only if he sends one of his daughters in exchange for his life.
Beauty goes to his castle to save her father’s life.
Beauty and the Beast by Elizabeth Tyler Wolcott (left) and Evelyn Stuart Hardy (right)
Every evening, Beast asks her if she will marry him, and while she refuses him answers, she gradually becomes accustomed to his amiable personality.
Every night, she dreams about a charming prince who needs her help, but she doesn’t know how to help him.
Beauty becomes homesick, and Beast gives her permission to leave, but she has to return before a certain date. If she doesn’t, he will die.
When she tells her sisters about the luxury in Beast’s castle, they become jealous and try to delay her departure.
Beauty dreams of the Beast being sick and returns just in time to save his life. She accepts his offer of marriage, and he transforms into a beautiful prince.
From Fairy Tale to Myth(s)
Cupid (Eros) and Psyche
1. Psyche is also the youngest and prettiest of three sisters.
2. Venus (Aphrodite) becomes jealous and plans revenge: She wants her son, Cupid, to make her fall in love with the ugliest creature in the world.
3. Instead, Cupid falls in love with Psyche.
4. Psyche, on the other hand, is so beautiful that no mortal man dares to propose to her.
Amor and Psyche by Ernst Roeber (left), Psyche Entering Cupid’s Garden (middle), and Psyche Opening the Golden Box by John William Waterhouse (right)
5 . Oracles advise her parents that Psyche should be sacrificed to a monster with supernatural powers.
6. Psyche is taken to the mountain, where invisible hands transport her to a mysterious castle. She lives there, being served by invisible servants.
7. Somebody joins her every night, but he stays invisible, too.
8. She falls in love with the ‘monster’ (Cupid) but must promise she will never look at him.
Charon and Psyche by John Roddam Spencer (left) and Psyche Showing Her Sisters Her Gifts from Cupid by Mary-Joseph Blondel (right)
9. Cupid arranges the visit of her sisters, who convince her to break her promise, and Cupid disappears.
10. After long periods of wandering (underworld included) and several trials, Psyche eventually finds Cupid, and they reunite. In both cases, we deal with the use and abuse of power, isolation, jealousy, sacrifice, revenge, and above all – love. It is claimed that love is the best remedy for the seemingly unsolvable issues.
What About Other Myths?
Aphrodite and Hephaestus
Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love and beauty, is so beautiful that other gods almost start a war for her hand, so Zeus (her father) promised her to Hephaestus, the most unattractive (to put it bluntly, the ugliest) of all gods.
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan by Francesco Solimena (left) and Venus Visiting Vulcan by David Teniers the Elder (right)
They live in the underworld, but she finds many ways to be unfaithful. It remains uncertain whether Eros (Cupid) is their son or the outcome of her affair with Ares (Mars).
While the story doesn’t have a happy ending, it still shares several important themes with the tale of Beauty and the Beast: isolation, sacrifice, jealousy, violation of trust, and abuse of power…
Galatea and Polyphemus
She is in love with handsome Acis, but ugly Cyclops Polyphemus wants her for himself. While Polyphemus plays music, Acis and Galatea enjoy each other’s company.
Polyphemus and Galatea by Gustave Moreau (left) and Galatea and Acis by Claude Lorrain (right)
Cyclop decides to destroy his rival with a huge rock (he can be explained as a personification of volcano Etna), and Galatea turns Acis into a river (this is a real river in Sicily).
There are versions of the story in which Galatea eventually falls in love with Polyphemus, and others in which they don’t end up together.
In any case, we have the same elements of isolation, magical transformation, jealousy, revenge, and unpredictable love.
Story of Europa
In this tale, Zeus changes himself into a bull and carries beautiful Europa (she probably belongs to the nobility) to the island of Crete.
Abduction of Europa by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
We have another tale which starts with a beast who desires a beauty, and she comes to his place (an isolated island) against her will. After a while, she becomes accustomed to him, and the legend says their relationship produced three kings. Again: love, passion, and magical number three!
Daphne and Apollo
In this myth, we meet Eros (Cupid) again.
Apollo and Daphne by Paolo Varonese (Caliari)
He is in charge of love, after all … well, Apollo insulted him, and he ensures he falls in love with a nymph (Daphne) who can’t return his love. The reason? She was hit by Cupid’s arrow, too, but in her case, the arrow was made of lead!
Daphne and Apollo by Benedetto Luti (left) and Piero del Pollaiolo (right)
To protect her virginity, her father, Peneus, transforms her into a laurel tree, and this is why Apollo bears laurel leaves on his head – and they are evergreen, just like his love!
Daphne and Apollo by Louis de Boullogne left)and Victor Bertin (right)
See? Revenge, use and abuse of power, magical transformation, he wants her, she doesn’t want him, the important role of her father … ?
Persephone and Hades
Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Hades is not just another ugly guy from Greek mythology. He is probably the second most powerful god after Zeus, and when he wants Persephone for his wife, nothing can stop him. He kidnaps her, and she becomes his wife. Demeter cursed the earth and promised nothing would grow until her daughter was back with her.
Abduction of Persephone by Ulpiano Checa (left) and Proserpine on the Throne b Harry George Theaker (right)
Zeus had to intervene. Persephone had really been sent back, but Hades had one more ace up his sleeve. The conflict was solved in an interesting way: she spent part of the time on the surface of the world and part in the underworld with Hades. Persephone’s time with Hades is called winter. We don’t know if she eventually fell in love with her husband.
In this case, identifying Beauty and the Beast is straightforward. The narrative involves a significant parental figure (typically the mother), forced isolation, abuse of power, a return to one’s roots, and various transformations.
Pluto and Proserpine by Henry Bryson Burroughs (left) and Fate of Persephone (Walter Crane)
Yes, the elements of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale can be traced in more than one classical myth!
What About Other Fairy Tales?
We can go even further. This fairy tale shares numerous similarities with other widely recognized stories.
The jealousy part (among sisters) can be recognized in Snow White (stepmother-stepdaughter).
Father, incapable of protecting or even endangering his daughter, is present in Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, and other tales.
The theme of isolation in a castle is also popular. The most similar situation is probably seen in Sleeping Beauty, where we even have invisible hands helping Beauty (older versions).
Let’s mention one of the most powerful messages from Beauty and the Beast, which is, of course: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ which is cynically twisted in Puss in Boots, where obviously ‘clothes make the man’.
The theme of the animal bridegroom is one of the most popular themes in the world of fairy tales, with the Frog Prince probably being the most well-known.
We could go on and on, but the point should be very clear by now – dealing with a single fairy tale, we are instantly involved with centuries of world cultural heritage. Civilization didn’t start with Walt Disney. The world of fables is as old as humankind, and every one of us has a more or less active part in it. Which myth related to Beauty and the Beast do you prefer?
While everybody knows Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, or Charles Perrault, they all borrowed material for their masterpieces from a single book written by Giambattista Basile. Who was this Italian writer? Why is his work so important, and why do most of us never hear of him?
Family
Reliable documentation about the birth of Giovan Battista (shortened Giambattista) Basile is scarce. We don’t even know his father’s name. Obviously, the Basile family has enough talent to put several of its members in the history books. Giambattista had at least one brother: Lelio, a successful poet and composer, and three sisters: Adriana, Margherita, and Vittoria, all popular singers in their time.
Adriana Basile, and later her daughter, Leonora Baroni, were the most famous singers in 17th-century Italy. Adriana especially played a crucial part in Giambattista’s literary success.
Portraits of Adrana Basile (left) and Leonora Baroni (right)
Family Basile is from Napoli, where Adriana very likely started her artistic career, but we can only find documents of her move to the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Mantua was the musical center of Italy in those times. The famous Monteverdi opera L’Orfeo premiered there in 1607. But let’s not skip the events.
Portrait of Giovan Batista Basile
Giambattista was probably born in 1566, and we know he served as a soldier of the Venetian Republic for a short time. He also visited Crete, one of the cultural crossroads of the then-known world. He was talented in linguistics and fluent in three languages from an early age. He probably first came into contact with Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s Facetious Nights, a collection of tales containing several early versions of fairy tales, such as Puss in Boots, Donkeyskin, and Hans My Hedgehog.
Sun, Moon, and Talia (left) and Petrosinella (right) by Warwick Goble
These tales and short stories are arranged in a format similar to Boccaccio’s famous Decameron, with storytellers telling tales to one another. The same form was later used by Giambattista Basile.
Between Mantua and Napoli
In 1610, Adriana and her husband, Muzio (Mutio) Baroni, moved to Mantua on the condition that Giambattista be hired as well. To be honest, a whole extended family, including her sisters Margherita and Vittoria, and children moved. The Duke accepted this condition, but Giambattista had another idea – he stayed in the Stigliano court, trying to occupy the emptied position of Muzio. He wrote a pastoral poem dedicated to the Prince of Stigliano, Carafa, and became a founding member of the Academy of Naples. The Academy became one of the major intellectual forces in southern Europe and an important crossroads of Italian and Spanish culture.
Map of Medieval Italy
In 1612, he finally moved to Mantua, where he composed numerous pieces of music for weddings, funerals, and other events of the local nobility. New duke Ferdinando promoted him to the position of the court gentleman. He proved himself a skilled organizer of various spectacles, earning him another invitation from Napoli. He became a feudal administrator and later a governor.
In a way, we can compare his roles to those of another important author from several centuries later who also worked primarily as an official in Louis XIV’s court: Charles Perrault.
These undoubtedly successful financial years probably ingrained his anti-court feelings and bitterness, which became more obvious in his later works, especially those written in the Neapolitan dialect. He signed his works in Italian and Spanish with his name and Neapolitan ones with a pseudonym – an anagram of his name – Gian Alesio Abbattutis. He maintained contact with the Neapolitan dialect and peasants throughout his life because his position required frequent visits to various properties belonging to his masters. One of his greatest wishes was to elevate the Neapolitan dialect to the status of the Tuscan dialect. Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch popularized the Tuscan dialect to such an extent that it later became the official language of Italy, which did not become a state until the second half of the 19th century.
The Count of Torone
Giambattista Basile worked for various princes and dukes as a governor and court writer, writing in Italian, Latin, and Spanish. He wrote many spectacles, including a masquerade for the visit of Maria of Austria, the sister of the Spanish king, to Naples.
Pippo (Cagliuso) by Warwick Goble
Basile was an important member of several academies. He officially became Count of Torone, a town in the province of Caserta, in 1624, signing all subsequent works with this title. His final position was governor of Giugliano in the province of Naples. In 1631, Mount Vesuvius erupted, followed by a deadly flu epidemic. Basile was one of its numerous victims. He died on February 23, 1632.
Several of his works remained unpublished, but fortunately, his sister Adriana decided to find publishers and preserve the literary heritage of her brother, who never experienced even a fraction of her glory but created one of the most important literary works in human history. Adriana decided to continue his legacy by signing his books in Neapolitan dialect with Gian Alesio Abbattutis.
Portraits of Adriana (left) and Giambattista (right) Basile
The Pentamerone
The Pentamerone was originally titled The Tale of Tales, with a subtitle, Entertainment for Little Ones. It is the first national collection of fifty fairy tales arranged in a frame format similar to that of Boccaccio’s Decameron, Straparola’s Facetious Nights, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the Arabian Nights. There are numerous old versions of today’s classic fairy tales, such as The Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Goose Girl, and Diamonds and Toads. This book inspired many major fairy tale writers in the following centuries and remains an invaluable source for fiction writers and other artists.
First editions of Il Pentamerone (in two books)
Written in the Neapolitan dialect, the text presented a significant challenge to translators and raised controversial issues for editors. Sir Richard Francis Burton completed the first full English translation, which was published posthumously by his wife. She did not allow any changes to the translation. But the second edition was rigorously censored just like all previous translations. Finally, in 2007, Nancy L. Canepa, a longtime scholar of Basile’s life and work, completed a full translation into modern English, which has been available in paperback since 2010.
The 2015 movie of the same name is based on three stories from the book and uses elements from several others. Don’t miss it. Giambattista Basile would love it!
Can you add another fact about Giambattista Basile’s life and work?
Il Pentamerone: The Oldest Known Collection of Fairy Tales
Il Pentamerone (also known as Lo cunto de li cunti, or The Tale of Tales) is little-known outside academic circles, yet it is foundational to many popular fairy tales. Published in the 17th century, it predates Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales, thereby setting the stage for classic fairy-tale literature.
Understanding Il Pentamerone’s special place in history requires context about its era and Basile’s intent. Its importance lies in its role as the cornerstone of the evolution of fairy-tale storytelling.
Indeed, some of the oldest versions of well-known tales, including Rapunzel, Cinderella, and The Beauty and the Beast, can be found in The Pentameron.
The Book
One of the most popular books in the 15th and 16th centuries was definitely Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. It presents 100 stories, each told by one of 10 people over 10 days.
How the Tales Came to Be Told by Warwick Goble (left) and The Goat-Faced Girl by Henry Justice Ford (right)
Such a framed format, with fictional people telling fictional tales, was popular for centuries and reached its peak with the publication of Galland’s Arabian Nights at the beginning of the 18th century. Gianbattista Basile chose the same format but decided to write 50 stories, not 100, as in the Decameron. This logically leads to the unofficial name Pentameron. Another important influence was Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s The Pleasant Nights, perhaps the first collection of written fairy tales (though it contains other types of stories as well). Some of the plots that appear later in Basile’s book were already present in The Pleasant Nights. Straparola’s major contribution to the then nonexistent genre was the structure of the tales. It was revolutionary in that it presented the possibility of climbing the social ladder thanks to magic. Straparola introduced a so-called rags-to-riches plot.
Basile, who likely held a higher social position than Straparola (whose life is shrouded in mystery), preferred a different kind of plot. The main character starts out as a prince, rich merchant, or similar member of the upper class, but loses this position due to circumstances beyond his or her control, such as war, illness, or accident.
But through the story, the fallen star regains his or her position, which may be even higher at the end of the story. Such a plot was definitely less problematic for the target audience than Straparola’s.
Yet just like Straprola, Basile didn’t want to risk – he never published his stories. They were printed only several years after his death, when his sister brought the manuscripts to the printers.
Portraits of Giambattista Basile and his sister Nicoletta
Basile’s Tale of Tales was published in two volumes: the first in 1534 and the second in 1536. Not even his sister dared to use the author’s real name, so the book was published under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis.
The style of narration is typical baroque with numerous unnecessary descriptions, which soon made the tales unfit for the new times, and they were almost forgotten until Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm discovered them in the translation of one of their colleagues, Felix Liebrecht.
They praised the book as the first collection of national fairy tales in history. Its famous collection contains recognizable plots of many well-known tales. One of the reasons for staying unknown to a wider audience was the language of Pentamerone. It was written in Neapolitan dialect with numerous vulgarisms and many elements unsuitable for sensitive ears.
Parsley (left), Three Enchanted Princes (middle) by Warwick Goble, and The Serpent Prince by Edmund Dulac (right)
The Stories
The Pentamerone starts with a frame story about Princess Zoza, who was unable to laugh. Her father finally manages to make her laugh, but she offended an old lady who put a spell on Zoza. She can marry a prince only if she fills a jug with her tears in three days. Just before the jug was filled, Zoza fell asleep, her slave stole it, and ended the task instead of her. The slave marries the prince, becomes pregnant, and demands to hear stories for her amusement. Ten storytellers, including Zoza (in disguise), told her five stories each, and one of them discloses a slave’s fraud. She is punished (cruelly), and Zoza finally gets her husband.
Among the told stories, we can find many of the first known written versions of popular fairy tales like Rapunzel (Parsley), Snow White (The Young Slave), Brother and Sister (Nennillo and Nennella), Diamonds and Toads (The Two Cakes), King Thrushbeard (Pride Punished) … Despite the subtitle (Stories for Little Ones) these tales were obviously not meant for kids. They are full of themes more fitting for yellowback literature, such as unfaithful spouses, treacherous servants, and evil neighbors. They are also the first written collection of fairy tales, most of which have plots present in many countries. This makes the Pentamerone a very special literary treasure.
Il Pentamerone, illustrations by George Cruikshank
Some of the biting sharpness of the original Pentamerone was lost through translations. Actually, most of the book was heavily censored. For example, the first English translation (Taylor, 1848) included only 30 stories instead of 50 because the general public deemed Basile’s humor unacceptable. The second edition of Taylor’s translation in 1912 kept only 12 stories! But thanks to the widow of Richard Burton, famous translator of the Arabian Nights, English still got a complete book in 1893, three years after his death. However, the second edition of this book in 1927 was heavily censored, a fact that the editors briefly explained as ‘some corrections.’The best available translation today is probably by Nancy Canepa. It is a direct translation from the Neapolitan dialect, featuring all 50 stories, and is backed by extensive research. It’s definitely not a children’s book, but an important document from which everybody can learn a lot about the literature, our society, and ourselves.
The Movie
The Tale of Tales (Il racconto dei racconti) is a movie extravaganza by Matteo Garrone, with Salma Hayek, Shirley Henderson, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly, and other movie stars. The book comprises three tales: The Enchanted Doe, The Flea, and The Flayed Old Lady, enriched with elements from other fairy tales in the Pentamerone.
The Enchanted Snake (left) and The Myrtle (right) by Warwick Goble
The movie is a unique creation with exotic settings, costumes, and music. Still, the plots and specific scenes may be a bit too gruesome for the general audience. The movie’s earnings (less than $6 million), despite its $12 million budget, reflect this concern. However, it will likely become a classic, a must-see for every film enthusiast willing to explore film beyond its ordinary limits. (And over two hours in length.) Beware: it’s R-rated for nudity and violence.
Giving Credit to the Original
The Pentameron, also known as The Tale of Tales, is arguably the most important book most people haven’t heard of. It introduced a so-called restoration plot into the story. In combination with fantastic elements, this plot forms the basis not only of fairy tales, but also of a significant portion of fiction in general.
The Enchanted Snake (left) and The Goat-Faced Girl (right) by Henry Justice Ford
The giants like Madame d’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, but also J. R. R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling all profited on this base, and it’s only fair to put the name of Giambattista Basile in the same group.
Her date of birth is unknown. Madame d’Aulnoy was born Marie-Catherine Le Jumel in Barneville-la-Bertrand, Normandy, around 1650, into one of the oldest and most respected families of Normandy. Her mother was about 16 years old.
Young Madame d’Aulnoy
Being the only child, she was raised by her grandmother as an heiress. When, at about 11 or 12, she had a baby brother, her parents switched to plan B: they sent her to a nunnery. In those days, nobility didn’t spend too much precious time with their own children.
Madame d’Aulnoy Fairy Tales covers by Clinton Peters (left) and Gordon Browne (right)
Marie-Catherine wasn’t happy about the idea, so she persuaded her father to find her a husband. At about 15 years of age, she married Baron d’Aulnoy. He was a heavy drinker, gambler, and abuser. He also had financial difficulties and was at least three decades older than his bride.
Portrait of Baroness d’Aulnoy
The young Baroness gave birth to three girls (two died soon after birth) in the first three years of her arranged marriage. She had at least one lover. With the help of her mother and two gentlemen, she entered into a conspiracy against her husband. He was subsequently accused of treason. Baron d’Aulnoy was cleared of accusations, and both false witnesses were executed. Madame d’Aulnoy had to flee Paris.
Blue Bird by Clinton Peters (left) and Warwick Goble (right)
We can only speculate what happened to her in the next few decades. She probably spent some time traveling. It is possible that she lived in Spain and England for several years. There are even rumors that she became an international spy, but we have no hard evidence to rely on.
The Invisible Prince (left) and Prince Cherry (right) by Warwick Goble
While d’Aulnoy’s memoirs mention another (illegitimate) daughter, a son, a new husband, several lovers (another widely accepted practice of the time), it is very hard to say what really happened. Facts in her writings are always fused with imagination.
She was involved in another conspiracy, resulting in the beheading of her friend Madam Angelique Tiquet. Because her brother died young, Marie-Catherine inherited a fortune after all. It is clear she lived in Paris from 1690 to 1701, when she died.
Hind in the Wood by Brinsley Le Fanu (left), Walter Crane (middle), and Warwick Goble (right)
Mme d’Aulnoy’s works
Memoirs from Spain and England brought immediate fame to Comtesse d’Aulnoy, as she signed her literary works. They were written in the fashion of the time. This means plenty of vivid descriptions of exotic places and rituals, with little attention paid to the facts.
Fair Goldilocks by Clinton Peters
Her memoirs have many elements of novels with long imaginary passages. Even fairy tales are woven into the narrative’s basic framework . The first fairy tale written by Madame d’Aulnoy (The Island of Happiness) was published in 1690, a year before Charles Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose. Her first collection was published only a few months after Perrault’s.
Princess Belle-Etoile by Clinton Peters (left) and Walter Crane (right)
If we can say that Perrault is the father of a fairy tale as a literary genre, she is the one who coined the term ‘fairy tales’ (French: ‘contes de fées’, which actually means ‘tales of fairies’). Thanks to the huge influence of her salon, she can be credited as the mother of the genre. Her fairy tales were obviously influenced by folklore, with a dominant theme of animal brides or bridegrooms. It is likely that she was introduced to them through Straparola’s The Facetious Nights and Basile’s Pentamerone rather than through oral tradition.
Madame d’Aulnoy, mother of the fairy tale
None of Madame d’Aulnoy’s works was written for children. They were actually all penned as romantic novels, sometimes formed as travelogues, often with fantastical elements, and always in a conversational tone with a live audience in mind.
The White Cat by Thomas Derrick (left) and Warwick Goble (right)
Historical context of d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales
Despite the fact that her works were internationally popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, all of them are nearly forgotten today for at least three reasons:
Bee and Orange Tree (left) and Prince Sprite(right) by Gordon Browne
Fairy tales became popular material for collectors (the brothers Grimm being the most famous of all) who presented them as a part of the cultural heritage of certain nations, in times when nations were not yet fully formed. These collections were written by scholars who wanted facts, not imagination.
The genre entered mass production during the 19th century. As with any business, this was a world of power, dominance, and competition. In short, a world for men. Yet, d’Aulnoy’s fairy tales were still printed then. With the rising demand for educational messages (like in one of her literary successors, Madam Le Prince de Beaumont), they slowly vanished from the bookshelves.
The narrative style of d’Aulnoy fell out of favor. When the audience expanded to include lower classes with less free time, readers started to prefer more ‘to the point’ written stories. Her fairy stories are pretty lengthy (from 12 to 44 printed pages each), and her narration lacked the dramatic suspense we are still used to today.
The Yellow Dwarf by Gordon Browne (left) and Walter Crane (right)
While the fairy tales of Madame d’Aulnoy will probably never gain global popularity again, they represent an important milestone in the development of the genre and literature in general. They are full of emotion and have many complex, powerful female characters. She deserves a place right next to another master of storytelling: Hans Christian Andersen.
Was The Little Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen himself?
The Little Mermaid (with sequels) is a popular animated movie made by Disney. However, if we look beyond plain entertainment, the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen offers much more. While Andersen’s Little Mermaid is one of his best, it is also among his saddest stories and features many autobiographical elements. Next, let’s examine the surprising history of this tale, where even the great master of storytelling lost control.
(Cover of French picture book illustrated by Ivan Bilibin)
Very short summary (Andersen’s version)
Little Mermaid is the youngest daughter of a Sea King. Each child must wait until their fifteenth birthday before going to the surface. For the youngest, waiting is hard as she listens to her older sisters’ stories about wonders on the coast, but finally, the day comes, and she can explore the world above.
(illustration by Hans Tegner)
The Little Mermaid falls in love with a human. They are both of royal origins, but belong to very different worlds. Mermaid tries to find a way to fit into the prince’s world, and it seems that with the help of the witch (and a lot of sacrifice), she can make it. But he falls in love with another girl. Little Mermaid lost her family and her beautiful voice and her feet, which she got in exchange for a fishtail, are hurting with every step – all for nothing. The witch offers her a second chance, but she should kill the prince for that.
(illustration by Ivan Bilibin)
Instead of that, the mermaid chooses to die.
Not a very optimistic fairy tale, right?
Who wrote The Little Mermaid, anyway?
Although we must credit Andersen with authorship, we should note that his Little Mermaid is not entirely original. The basic plot is copied from Undine, written by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. Undine is a romantic novel, based on a French folk tale, and was one of the most popular books of the 19th century. Andersen was familiar with it for sure. While he drew on the improbable love between a human and a fairy creature and a quest for the soul, he also added many original twists and enriched the story with autobiographical elements.
How can writing expose the writer?
(illustration by Anne Anderson)
Even if we have never heard about the other versions of Little Mermaid and don’t really care about Andersen’s personal involvement in writing, we can spot a few moments in the story where things don’t look just as they are supposed to. Here are three of them:
The situation where the mermaid rescues the prince but backs away when she could take credit for her bravery is pretty contradictory to her character as presented before and after that. But it tells us more about Andersen’s personality than he probably wanted to tell in any of his three autobiographies, written during his life. He was extremely shy in personal relations, and he never overcame the problem of expressing and confronting his true feelings. Although he was in love on more than a few occasions, he never managed to build an intimate relationship.
The scene where the title character gets a chance to get even, if she kills the prince, is wrong from the very beginning. Well, not exactly wrong, but certainly not written in the tradition of folktales. With all the painful self-sacrifice, it actually looks more like a passage from the Holy Bible. Hans Christian Andersen was very religious, and he found deep consolation in his faith. If we look at the fairy tale about the little mermaid as a retelling of his personal problem, it makes perfect sense to understand it as a kind of religiously inspired statement.
The afterword with explanation of the rules by which the mermaid can achieve her main goal (immortal soul) sooner if children behave, and later if they don’t. This definitely sounds more like preaching, not storytelling. Listeners don’t appreciate this kind of blackmailing, and we can say the writer of Andersen’s quality should never afford to do that.
All of this can be used as proof of how deeply involved Andersen was in the story, if he made such ‘mistakes’, but we can actually confirm the theory with documents: personal letters and the writer’s diary. Instead of doing that, we’ll try to stay on the brighter, although a bit yellowish side, and explain who the real people are, who inspired Andersen’s retelling of this popular fairy tale.
(illustration by Anne Anderson)
Real characters in the story of the Little Mermaid
Real Little Mermaid
The title character is Hans Christian, of course. She not only resembles his personal love story (unfulfilled) but also some of his characteristics. Both are secluded, both very curious, both fascinated by new, unexplored places, and being of royal origin (Andersen believed he was an illegitimate son of Christian VIII), they seek attention from nobility.
(illustration by Elisabeth Stuart Hardy)
There is more. The greatest storyteller of all time tried to enter the world of theatre (his initial plan, when he left his home, was ‘to become famous’) as a singer and dancer, much before he wrote the first lines of any kind of fiction. He was even accepted in the Royal Danish Theatre thanks to his marvellous tenor, but his voice soon changed, and he lost the job. As a dancer, he was not so deprived of skill as elegance because he was too tall. All details are closely related to the mermaids who lost family, voice, and exchanged their fish tails for human legs (she could dance gracefully, but every step hurt).
As we can see, the mermaid is making a sacrifice after a sacrifice to get closer to the prince, and it is obvious he likes her company as well. On the other hand, he stays distant, and in some cases, their relationship doesn’t even resemble friendship. We find out that he allows her to sleep at the doors of his bedroom, and we get the feeling he thinks about her more like a pet.
(illustration by Edmund Dulac)
Real Prince
Who was the real prince in Andersen’s life? Who was nice, polite, but always reserved in all communications with the famous storyteller? If we recognize the writer in the mermaid, can we presume the prince was actually a lady?
Not at all! Although Hans Christian Andersen was seriously in love several times, biographers agree the prince in The Little Mermaid could be only one person: Edvard Collin. Edvard Collin was the son of Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Danish Theatre and benefactor to Hans. Jonas arranged additional education for Hans and convinced King Frederick VI to pay for it. Hans Christian and Edvard became good friends, but with time, Andersen’s affection grew into infatuation. When he confessed his love, Edvard stayed friendly, but kept his distance. He never even accepted Andersen’s proposal to be addressed as a friend and family member (they were living under the same roof for years after all) and insisted on staying formal to the very end of their lives. On the other hand, he didn’t mind being on more friendly grounds with members of the upper middle class (like Wilhelm Wanscher, for instance), whose family Collin belonged to, and Andersen didn’t.
(portrait of Edvard colin and Henriette Thyberg)
Henriette Oline Thyberg
Henriette Thyberg, a family friend, married Edvard Collin in August 1836, the same year that the fairy tale The Little Mermaid was published. She was also a member of the bourgeois class and a perfect match for Edvard. They had four kids: three daughters (two of whom died as children) and a boy, and they all became something of an extended family for Hans Christian, who wasn’t very skilled with paperwork and relied on Edvard’s help with publishing contracts and other business aspects of his creative work. In return, he built a monument to Edvard and Henriette’s daughter, Gerda, who died when she was only four, in another masterpiece: The Snow Queen, in which the main character is modeled (and named) after the deceased girl.
Although Henriette, in a way, defeated Hans in a ‘fight’ for Edvard’s heart, they all remained friends throughout their lives and were even buried in the same grave for several years. So we can’t be surprised to find that the mermaid could not harm the prince when she saw him sleeping in the bed with his bride. She would rather choose her own death.
(illustration by Edmund Dulac)
What about other characters?
We could go on and on with decoding the fairy tale, maybe starting with the Little Mermaid’s sisters who tried to get her back in their kingdom underwater, just like the writer’s real family members on several occasions unpleasantly reminded him of his origin, but there is no need for that.
The fact is, this particular fairy tale was not meant to be read to children. It was not even meant to be published. The initial intention of H. c. Andersen was to write a beautiful, sad, and slightly accusing love letter to the biggest love of his life. Yes, just like we can say The Puss in the Boots could be read as Perrault’s cynical biography, we can understand The Little Mermaid as a romantic love letter in which, despite some of the above-mentioned imperfections, it is one of the best literary works ever.
The reason is probably very simple. We can all relate to the pains of the rejected siren, just like we can all relate to a Cinderella at certain points in our lives. When a story touches so many hearts in the audience, it’s a great story. We don’t need a literary critic to explain that.
(illustration by William Heath Robinson)
In Andersen’s Fairy Tale, the Little Mermaid Dies!
But Andersen concluded the story on an optimistic note, implying that she would eventually attain an immortal soul. However, he also made one of the biggest mistakes as a writer. He wrote that kids can speed up (or delay) the process of their admission to heaven by ‘being good.’ This suggestion equals blackmail.
Edvard Collin and his wife Henriette were later buried with Andersen. However, their family members moved the Collins’ bodies after some years to the family plot in another cemetery.
Oscar Wilde was a world-renowned playwright, but many people are unaware of his fairy tales. He wrote two books for them, one for each of his sons. Interesting, isn’t it? Oscar Wilde believed fairy tales are essential for raising children, but he wasn’t satisfied with the existing classic works by the Grimm Brothers, Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and others. Still, he obviously wasn’t indifferent to fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. We can find many similarities between the fairy tales of both authors.
Oscar Wilde read fairy tales to his sons, and we can also speculate that his writing was also influenced by his wife Constance, a productive editor, translator, and writer. This makes Wilde’s fairy tales a family project!
Oscar Wilde’s list of fairy tales is short. He wrote only nine, and they were published in two separate books, which are both collectible items today. Some of these fairy tales were also published together with Wilde’s works for an adult audience, especially with The Picture of Dorian Gray. Another hint that they were not necessarily made for children is some illustrations which, by today’s standards, were ‘not suitable for work.’ Don’t worry, we didn’t include any of them. Before we delve into each story, we’ll present them with summaries of all fairy tales. Let’s first look at the tales collected in Wilde’s initial volume.
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
The book was first published in 1888, just before Cyril Wilde’s (who used the surname Holland for most of his life) third birthday. It includes five fairy tales, beginning with the title story.
The Happy Prince: summary
Illustration: Spencer Baird Nichols
This is one of the most well-known and popular fairy tales by Oscar Wilde. The story begins in the Palace of Sans-Souci, where the prince lived a happy but futile life of pleasures. Only after his death, when his statue was put on a pedestal, did he see all the misery, poverty, and injustice in his town.
The Happy Prince was covered with gold leaves, there were precious stones in place of his eyes, and his sword was decorated with a ruby. With the help of a swallow, the Happy Prince then literally gives himself part by part to poor people until he is left with nothing. Because ‘he was no longer beautiful, he was no longer useful,’ councilors ordered the melting of the statue. The swallow, who was so eager to help the prince, didn’t fly south in time and froze to death. So councilors also decided to proclaim, ‘No bird is allowed to die here.’
In the ending scene, God orders them to bring him the most valuable things from town, and the angels bring him a statue heart made of lead and a dead bird.
The Nightingale and the Rose – The summary
Illustration: Charles Robinson
The tale of Rose and Nightingale is one of selflessness and the ridiculousness of some of the things we all do in life.
This fairy tale starts with a student who wants to impress a princess. He discovered that she likes red roses, and he wants to give her a perfect red rose. The problem is that there are no red roses in the garden. So a nightingale makes a deal with a white rose, and they will together create the most beautiful red rose ever.
The bird sings every day, even though the rose’s thorn slowly pierces its heart, and sings the most beautiful songs of life, even though it’s really losing its heart. They succeed, but the bird dies. The princess says, “I’m afraid it won’t go with my dress.”
All the sacrifices didn’t help, and the student concludes that love is too impractical, so he shall study Philosophy.
The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde
Illustration: Charles Robinson
The story of the Selfish Giant is a story about altruism. Here is a summary:
Giant has a beautiful garden with all sorts of flowers and fruits growing in it, and while he was on a visit (for several years), children from the neighborhood started to play in this garden. When he returned, he kicked the kids out. But!
Winter came into the garden, and it stays in for the full year. Only when the giant let the children back in did the garden begin to look like a garden again. The crucial part is meeting with one child who was too small to reach up to the tree, and the giant helps him to get there.
Children once again visited the garden, and the trees were in full bloom. But the little child didn’t come back until the very end of the giant’s life. That’s when we learned that the child was Jesus.
The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde
Illustration: Jacomb Hood
This fairy tale bears a slight resemblance to Andersen’s “Little Claus and Big Claus.” Here we have a rich man and a poor man, too, but the poor one doesn’t win in the end. In fact, he dies after exploitation and a series of misfortunes.
A rich miller and a poor gardener are friends, or at least they are supposed to be. Miller visits the gardener every day and picks his most beautiful flowers.
He never gives him any money. After a long winter, the gardener was almost starved to death (the miller didn’t want to bother inviting him into his warm house full of stuff because he didn’t want to spoil him).
Then the miller promised to give the gardener his old wheelbarrow in exchange for more services.
Ultimately, the gardener passed away during one of his “missions” before he could acquire a wheelbarrow, which was rendered useless and inoperable. The miller realizes that he is only concerned with his wheelbarrow and will never provide any assistance to anyone.
The Remarkable Rocket
Illustration: Charles Robinson
There are many ways in which Remarkable Rocket is like Oscar Wilde’s life. It is a story about a rocket waiting to explode in its full glitter and beauty, like Wilde, most of whose life promised much more than it actually showed.
In the end, the rocket explodes when nobody sees or hears her, like Wilde died lonely and almost forgotten.
Illustration: Walter Crane
A House of Pomegranates
The book came out in 1891, when Oscar Wilde’s second son, Vyvyan (like his older brother, he used the surname Holland for most of his life), was almost five years old. There are only four fairy tales in this book. We’ll present them in the order they were published.
The Birthday of the Infanta
Illustration: Jessie Marion King
This is the only Wilde’s fairy tale with a woman in the title (a rocket is not considered a human being). But she, the female equivalent of the Happy Prince (when he was still alive), a spoiled child, as Oscar Wilde himself was in many ways, is not the main character.
The protagonist of the narrative is a crippled, unattractive boy who was discovered in the forest and purchased from his father solely for the purpose of entertaining the princess through dancing (the term “infantas” refers to the daughters of Spanish and Portuguese kings, and “infant” means child). She was delighted with his appearance, and he, naïve as he was, believed she really liked him.
When he hears that he will dance again after the break, he starts dreaming about how they will become friends. Then he strayed into the palace and, for the first time, saw his unattractive image in the mirror. Boy realizes the unpleasant truth. Princess never liked him. She was only laughing at him.
This literally breaks his heart, and he dies just when the princess enters. Her statement? “Those who come to play with must not have hearts!”
The Star-Child
Illustration: Spencer Baird Nichols
Of all of Wilde’s works, the Star-Child story most closely resembles traditional fairy tales. It tells us about a boy found in the woods who denies his mother when he is found because he is beautiful and she is not.
After a series of tests and a lot of repentance, we got the classic transformation and happy ending, but Wilde would not be Wilde without an addition: Star-Child becomes a king (good one) only for a few years. Then he died, and the next king was evil.
The Young King
Illustration: Spencer Baird Nichols
In this Oscar Wilde fairy tale, a young man is born into the king’s only daughter’s covert marriage. There were all sorts of rumors about the boy’s father and what happened to him and the princess who vanished soon after the birth. The boy was raised by commoners, and the king, who was dying, wanted his grandson back.
The story starts when the young prince waits for his coronation. He is supposed to dress in the most precious clothes, but in his dreams, he sees so much suffering caused in the search for perfect fabric, perfect pearls, and so on, he decides he will go to church dressed like a shepherd. In the church, a miracle happens. This child made the selfish giant change his mind.
The Fisherman and His Soul
Illustration: Jessie Marion King
Wilde’s fairy tale, The Fisherman and His Soul, is a story about a man who falls in love with a mermaid. If he wants to join her, he should get rid of his soul.
He asks a witch for help, and after some delay, she tells him what to do. The problem is that his soul doesn’t want to leave. And when it does, they agreed the fisherman will return to the seaside every year just in case he changes his mind.
In many ways, this fairy tale resembles Andersen’s Little Mermaid, but is written from a different point of view and with a different message. While in Andersen’s story the soul was the ultimate goal, Wilde presents it as useless and corrupted. His sympathies are clearly on the side of the soulless creatures of the ocean.
Reflecting on these stories, we are led to consider: do the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde echo Andersen’s stories?
Some experts say the fairy tales in both books he wrote are maybe the best example of Wilde’s mastery of the language. His vivid landscape descriptions, emotional portrayals, flawless dialogues, and critiques of the social system are united to form captivating narratives that leave a profound and enduring impression on the minds of readers, despite the absence of explicit moral messages.
Wilde’s fairy tales present his view on life, not how it should be, but how it is, with a lot of pathos but also a lot of hope, which can probably be compared with only one fairy tale author: Hans Christian Andersen, whose language was much simpler and down-to-earth. If we can easily find folk stories that inspired Andersen, with Wilde, things are more complicated.
His tales contain traditional themes (a prince on a quest, the children in the forest, a conflict between good and evil), but there are also clear references to other works. The Faustian deal, perfectly written in Picture of Dorian Gray, is also present in The Fisherman and His Soul, a brilliant rewriting of Little Mermaid, one of the saddest fairy tales by H. C. Andersen, but in even darker tones.
Andersen’s fairy tales are reflected in all of Wilde’s fairy tales; sometimes this is less obvious and sometimes more so. Both writers are very religious and use a lot of humor and emotion in their writing.
In Wilde’s fairy tales, Andersen’s melancholy is replaced with cynicism, and Andersen’s irony at Wilde’s works turns into sarcasm. If we can still find a search for the place in the society in Andersen’s tales, Wilde’s tales are extremely individualistic. It is certainly no coincidence that The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and House of Pomegranates (1891) were written and published right after the births of his sons. Cyril was born in 1885, and Vyvyan in 1886, but they were not written with these kids specifically in mind. They talk to every child in the world, and the adults can benefit from them, too. Maybe even more. Because everybody should, just like the Happy Prince, sooner or later get out of the palace ‘where sorrow is not allowed to enter.’
Some similarities between Oscar Wilde’s and Hans Christian Andersen’s lives and works they both:
preferred talking to writing,
preferred theater to books,
wrote fairy tales with a lot of emotions, criticism of society, and without happy endings,
achieved high popularity in the highest circles, but were essentially unhappy in private life,
wrote with a lot of irony, bitterness, and sarcasm in their works,
wrote their works for children with their parents in mind,
died due to the consequences of their falls a few years before.
So, share the article online, pin the images, read the fairy tales, and help keep Oscar Wilde’s legacy alive.
Oscar Wilde: master of quotes and artist of the scandal
Oscar Wilde wrote many books and plays; his personal life, marked by both acclaim and controversy, remains as notable as his literary works. The intersection between Wilde’s creative achievements and personal affairs ultimately led to his early and tragic death, setting the stage for a life both brilliant and turbulent.
Less commonly recognized but important to Oscar Wilde’s public image is his role as a husband and devoted father of two. Beyond his flamboyant persona, he shared fairy tales with his children and even wrote several himself.
In this review, we will explore some of his most notable quotes on love and life, highlight key moments from his biography and the decisions that led to his premature death, and present a few of his notable works.
In a separate article, we’ll also present both books of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales: The Happy Prince and The House of the Pomegranates.
We can learn even more about Oscar Wilde from his fairy tales (which you can find for free on the internet) than from his official biographies.
However, a word of caution: Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales are astonishingly beautiful, yet they never (!!!) end with happily ever after!
I got nothing to declare but my genius. (Oscar Wilde)
Privileged child
Oscar Wilde always looks the same in photos.
Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 as the second son of William and Jane Wilde. He was surrounded by intellectuals from his birth, had private tutors and governesses from France and Germany. He learned foreign languages as other kids played with the ball, and this marked him for the rest of his life.
The same is true for the lifestyle of his parents, who were celebrities, regularly organizing parties for other important members of society. Glamour was Wilde’s most loyal friend throughout most of his life.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. (Oscar Wilde)
Oscar Wilde’s father
Sir William, Oscar Wilde’s father
Oscar Wilde’s father’s profession was a respectful one. He was a successful doctor, a surgeon specializing in eyes and ears, but also a philanthropist, and a writer who contributed many works to the fields of medicine, archaeology, folklore, and poetry. His success eventually brought him the title of a knight, so he became Sir William in 1864.
He was running his own hospital and once performed a surgery on the father of another famous Irishman: George Bernard Shaw. His private life was not so perfect. He had three illegitimate children with different women before he married.
Sir William Wilde acknowledged his fatherhood and paid for the education of his illegitimate children; however, they were raised by his relatives rather than by him. Nevertheless, his eldest son, Henry, later became his assistant in the hospital.
His illegitimate daughters Emily and Mary died young in a bizarre accident with fire.
Sir William’s reputation suffered badly soon after his knighthood when one of his patients claimed he drugged her with chloroform and abused her. The case came to court, and Sir William’s name was stained for the rest of his life.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. (Oscar Wilde)
Oscar Wilde’s mother
Oscar Wilde’ mother and her book of poems
Oscar’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a very special lady long before she earned the title Lady Wilde. She was a poet, translator, patriot, and pretty snobbish.
Most of her life, she was lying about her age (she claimed she was born in 1826, even though her father died two years before, and her birth certificate stated she was born in 1821) and her ancestors.
She claimed to be a descendant of Dante Alighieri because her original surname was supposed to be Algiati, after Italian immigrants to Ireland; however, her family actually came from northeast England.
For her artistic work, which often carried strong patriotic notes, she used different pseudonyms, including male names; however, the most well-known was Speranza. Maybe inspired by her imaginary ancestor Dante’s quote from Inferno? Speranza, of course, means ‘hope’.
These were not the only eccentricities in her life, which was full of ups and downs. She steadfastly supported her husband during his trial, even at great cost, and later encouraged Oscar, even as his fate became clear, to remain in London and face adversity, a decision that shaped his life’s outcome.
After her husband’s death, Speranza moved to London to live with her older son, Willie, who also had financial difficulties, and when she died, the family was practically broke, so she was buried in a common ground without a headstone.
Speranza
(The image above is a reproduction of a sketch supposedly made by George Morosini)
Oscar and his mother were described as snobs in many different sources, but this was not their only common feature.
They were both very superstitious. Oscar Wilde was afraid of ‘evil eyes’ throughout his life, and he always wore scarab rings on both little fingers.
Superstition, ingrained in local folklore, inherited from the mother, is only one of Wilde’s common features with another great author: Hans Christian Andersen.
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. (Oscar Wilde)
Brilliant student
Oxford Coat of Arms
Oscar Wilde began his formal education at the age of nine when he enrolled in Portora Royal School, where Samuel Beckett, another important Irish writer, later started his own.
Wilde was a brilliant student, but was also remembered as lazy. He won numerous awards and, eight years later, continued his studies at Trinity College, where he won the prestigious Berkeley Gold Medal and ultimately landed a place at Oxford.
He was also a top student in Oxford, and among his other achievements, one of his poems earned him another greatly appreciated award: the Newdigate Prize. Even more important was his friendship with two influential intellectuals: John Ruskin (photo on the left) and Walter Pater (sketch on the right). Especially the latter introduced him to the principles of the Aesthetic movement, where art is created ‘for art’s sake’, not for some moral or educational purpose.
Oxford was also the place where Wilde discovered his affection for young men, which caused him all sorts of problems in the Victorian era, when such feelings were considered a criminal offense.
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary. (Oscar Wilde)
Florence Balcombe, sketch by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde and Girls
Oscar Wilde’s first sweetheart was Florence Balcombe (picture on the right), and he probably had serious plans with her when he returned to Dublin after graduation. But in the meantime, she had already found another boyfriend.
He wasn’t just anybody. He was also a long-time Wilde family friend. His name was Bram Stoker, and he later wrote one of the most popular horror novels of all time: Dracula. Her connection with vampires was a long-lasting: in 1925, she successfuly won a battle on copyright infringement. As an executor of her late husband’s literary works she sued the makers of Nosferatu, a movie from 1922, for unathorized adaptation. All copies of the movie were destroyed.
Although Wilde didn’t mourn too long over her decision for another man, this loss obviously hurt him. In his farewell letter, he wrote that he is returning to England, this time for good. After that, he really came back to Ireland only on two occasions and for a very limited time.
On the other hand, he wasn’t lacking in ladies’ attention either. He was flirting with Lillie Langtry, who was already married and who greatly inspired his most successful work ever: Salome. Lillie Langtry was a famous model and actress who became one of the most popular socialites of her time.
Photos of Lillie Langtry (left) and Violet Hunt (right)
Wilde was also, for some time, the lover of Violet Hunt. But who wasn’t? This energetic lady, who was also a writer, is now much more known for her scandalous private life. She hosted literary meetings where she started and ended many relationships with now famous writers like Henry James, Arnold Bennett, and D. H. Lawrence, who were only some of her close friends (if not more), and Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, and Ford Madox Ford were certainly her lovers, and being affected mostly by married men, she ruined many marriages.
Wilde proposed to her in 1879, and she refused him. In Wilde’s life, there were also many ladies of questionable virtues, and from one of them he contracted a disease which can ultimately culminate in cerebral meningitis, the official cause of his death.
Considering his lifestyle, it was quite surprising when he married Constance Lloyd in 1884, with whom he had two sons in the next two consecutive years.
You can never be overdressed or overeducated. (Oscar Wilde)
Need for Attention
(Wilde did just about everything to be noticed!)
Example of Aestheticism
(The picture above, a work of William Powell Frith, presents Wilde at his best: surrounded by his admirers.)
There is a short story with some truth and some fiction, as every story should have. When Wilde wrote his first collection of poems, he offered it to several publishers. All of them refused to publish his work without even looking at it.
Wilde got the impression that they were not really looking for well-written poems. They wanted an impressive author. Somebody who would draw attention by his name and appearance. They wanted a celebrity, and he was not famous enough.
So he decided to draw attention whenever and wherever he could. His excessive behavior, the way he dressed, and his company all seemed like a constant need for attention. He entered the restaurant in such a striking dress that the guests started throwing food at him.
He was walking up and down the Pall Mall with a lily or sunflower in his hand. He was often given food when entering certain restaurants. He was escorted by police when driving in a coach because he needed protection. Not exactly the image of a contemplative thinker and peaceful artist… After all, he was the one who had said there is only one thing worse than being talked about: not being talked about!
When newspapers were full of his name, he took the manuscript to the publisher. He accepted it without even looking at the poems. Wilde’s name guaranteed sales.
His desire for attention was probably one of the main reasons for starting a fight with Queensberry, which finally led him to prison. He had many chances to move abroad and live his life and write more plays, but this would certainly not satisfy Wilde’s constant need for attention.
The truth behind The Picture of Dorian Gray
Was Dorian Gray a real person?
His only novel, and besides Salome, Oscar Wilde’s most popular work, has a very interesting background. Man, who inspired the character of Dorian Gray, was a real person, and for some time, a very close friend of Wilde.
His name was John Gray, and he was a poet coming from the working class. As we can find from various sources, some people stopped what they were doing to stare at him because he was so handsome. He looked much younger than he actually was, and even at an older age, kept the look of a young boy.
It is not known how close was the relationship between Wilde and Gray, but it is obvious that Gray for some time, enjoyed his role of being Dorian (he even signed at least one letter to Wilde with this name) and later (after Wilde started hanging out with Lord Alfred Douglas) strongly fought against everything what suggested he was the real Dorian Gray.
John Gray even hired a lawyer when the trial against Wilde started. Just to be prepared in case somebody wanted to involve him in the mess. He later studied priesthood and became a canon of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.
Wilde was for some time mocking him because of his new friend (who was supposedly so ugly even his own mother didn’t want to see him anymore), but it seems Oscar, not John, was the one who couldn’t get over their mutual past.
In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde compared his friendships with Lord Alfred Douglas and John Gray as incomparable. His feelings for John were much more sincere than his feelings for Bosie (the nickname of Lord Alfred). Knowing all this, we have another special undertone when we read The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Controversial (and Influential!) Salome
Salome is a biblical character, the daughter or step-daughter of King Herod. On his birthday, she performed a beautiful dance he (Herod) promised her anything as a reward. (This dance is sometimes called the dance of the seven veils.) She asked for the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate, and she got it.
Aubrey Beardsley: Salome
Oscar Wilde used the plot from this story for his play Salome, where the title character is portrayed as a seductive woman with mysterious motifs. This play was first written in French and translated into English (partly by Wilde and partly by Lord Alfred Douglas), and it is not clear who did what part. It seems Oscar Wilde was not happy with Douglas’ translation (his French was incomparably inferior to Wilde’s), and he rewrote most of it. The English edition of Salome was illustrated by another great and extravagant artist, Aubrey Beardsley (image above). Wilde didn’t want to give credit for the translation to his friend and lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, so he instead dedicated the work to him, which caused some controversy. Anyway, the play was banned before it even premiered because at that time it was understood as the illegal use of biblical characters on stage.
Salome first premiered privately in 1896, when Wilde was imprisoned, and later, it was performed only for a private audience. The official premiere of Salome was much later (1931), three decades after Wilde’s death. This superbly constructed play (Al Pacino played the character of Herod twice on the stage and in 2011 on the big screen) inspired many works, like Richard Strauss’ opera, Nick Cave’s play, many movies (Ken Russel’s is most notorious of all), Pete Doherty’s lyrics on the album Grace / Wastelands, and so on.
Did you know?
Real Salome, the woman who ordered a head on the plate, later became a queen and a mother, but more interesting is the way she died.
She was passing a frozen lake, ice cracked, she fell and was beheaded by the hit against the sharp edge of ice – beheaded her!
Boys
Oscar Wilde’s Greatest Love
Although Wilde had many affairs with men, only two of his lovers are really important.
First is certainly Robert (Robbie) Ross, a Canadian of noble origin, who moved to England when he was only two years old. He had met Oscar when Wilde’s wife Constance was pregnant for the second time, and his boyish look immediately charmed the already successful writer.
They started living together soon after, and Robbie was the man who stayed by Oscar Wilde to the very end of his life. He was with him at the deathbed, and he also edited and published several of Wilde’s works after Wilde’s death. But another man played an even more important role.
Lord Alfred Douglas (called Bosie, short for Boysie, as his mother called him) met Wilde in 1891 and was everything Wilde ever dreamed of: a charming, imaginative, spoiled, extravagant, and lazy aristocrat who lived for pleasure and nothing else. On one occasion, when Wilde was sick, he said to Wilde that he is so boring he will leave him immediately if he falls ill again.
Actually, he did that; he moved to the hotel and sent the bill to Wilde. He was also giving Wilde’s clothes to males of questionable virtue, with whom he was having fun, and on one of these occasions, he lost love letters, which were later used as incriminating material in a fatal trial, where Oscar Wilde lost virtually everything he had gained in his life.
(In the photo above, we can see Oscar with Bosie)
Marquess of Queensberry
Wilde vs. Queensberry
The Marquess of Queensberry was the father of Alfred Douglas. He belonged to an old and very conservative family and had a military background with a long tradition of hunting, gambling, and suicides.
(Lord John, Marquess of Queensberry)
Lord John, Alfred’s father, also had a son named Francis, who was in a relationship with a man. Not just anybody, but Lord Rosebery, who became a Prime Minister in 1894. Queensberry blamed Rosebery for the death of Francis, which happened in very suspicious circumstances.
When Queensberry heard about his son Alfred’s partying with the infamous Wilde, he pretty much freaked out. He was trying to stop their relationship no matter what, and on one occasion, publicly insulted Wilde, addressing him as somdomite (not a typo).
Cocky Oscar Wilde, backed by always temperamental Bosie, began a libel suit which very quickly turned against him.
Queensberry had skillful lawyers who presented Wilde as a man obsessed with boys.
For some time, Wilde quite enjoyed the show, providing witty answers and eliciting many laughs from the audience. However, in the end, he was sentenced to prison and was required to pay all the expenses, which financially ruined him.
(Wilde and Douglas)
Who was Vyvyan Holland?
Son of Oscar Wilde
Wilde’s family after his imprisonment…
When Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison, his wife Constance decided to change her and their two sons’ surnames to Holland. All three moved to Switzerland. She died in 1898, and her relatives didn’t allow Oscar to see his kids again. Robert Ross later became a good friend of both Wilde’s sons.
The older son, Cyril, was killed in WW1 by a German sniper, but the younger, Vyvyan (in photo), who also fought in World War I, later became a pretty successful writer and translator. He was an editor at the BBC for some time, and he had one son: Merlin Holland, who also became a writer and editor (among other occupations). He is married and has a son, so Wilde’s descendants are still alive and creative.
Oscar Wilde: De Profundis
Some trivia about De Profundis
It is actually a really long letter to Lord Alfred Douglas,
Wilde was not allowed to send it, but he could take it out when he was released,
he was given only one sheet of paper a day, and this was taken away in the evening,
Robert Ross titled the letter ‘De Profundis’ years after Wilde died.
The Artist is the creator of beautiful things. (Oscar Wilde)
Recommended works by Oscar Wilde
Here is the list of the most well-known and influential works written by Oscar Wilde. They are all in the Public Domain, but if you want to use them in your projects, please check for other details, such as copyright on translations, graphic material, and so on. These works can be read online or downloaded in different formats, depending on your preferences and gadgets.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
It’s a well-known story resembling Faust, a classic German legend based on a real person. And like Faust was based on Johannes Georg Faust, Wilde’s Dorian Gray was partly based on John Gray, a young poet who looked not only beautiful, but also way too young.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Wordplay on earnest and Ernest is just a start of this comedy, now considered one of Wilde’s masterpieces.
Salome by Oscar Wilde
If we have to choose only one work from Wilde’s opus, this play would be the winner. This is the English translation published in 1906, without a foreword.
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
De Profundis is a 50 thousand words long letter addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas. It was written at the beginning of 1897 in prison. Wilde was weak and ill, and he was not allowed to send the letter; however, he was permitted to take it with him upon release. It was copied after prison.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. (Oscar Wilde)
(Henry Bushnell, the Wilde’s lover in prison?)
After Prison
There’s some indication through Wilde’s letters that he had a lover referred to as ‘a dark-eyed little chap’ in prison as well. His name was Henry Bushnell, and he was sentenced for theft. His record was quite remarkable: between 1892 and 1911, he was sentenced twenty-one times! Some historians believe that after being released, Wilde occasionally sent him money. It’s not clear how physical their relationship could be. Victorian prisons were designed for maximum isolation, with a chapel having partitions between seats, inmates wearing so-called scotch caps, preventing eye contact, and strictly forbidden to talk with each other. On the other hand, Wilde was also sentenced to hard labour, where some kind of communication seemed more viable.
My existence is a scandal. (Oscar Wilde)
When Oscar Wilde was released from the penitentiary in 1897, he was without money and friends. It is known that Aubrey Beardsley, who illustrated Salome, crossed the road just to avoid meeting him on the street. Constance was sending some money to Oscar, but did not allow him to see his sons.
He moved to France and spent most of his time, money, and energy on alcohol. One of the rare friends who didn’t turn back on him was Robert Ross.
Oscar Wilde was still able to write; he corrected a couple of plays, but as he said, ‘lost the joy of writing’, so he never created anything new. Only three years later, his health deteriorated so badly that he died. Only one day before his death, he managed to do what he intended for decades: he converted from protestant to the catholic religion.
Oscar Wilde died on 30 November 1900 in Paris. This was the end of one of the most brilliant minds in literary history. If he were not such a lazy writer and so obsessed with so many eccentricities, his legacy would certainly be much bigger, probably in the range of Shakespeare or Dickens.
If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any. (Oscar Wilde)
The grave of Oscar Wilde is a popular spot for tourists in Paris.
Wilde is dead, long live Wilde!
The official cause of Wilde’s death was cerebral meningitis, but it is not known what caused it. It seems the rupture of his ear from prison contributed to the development of illness, although there are also speculations about other reasons.
His tomb was constructed under the guidance of Robert Ross, whose ashes are also in an urn in the tomb. There is an angel on the tomb, and an epitaph from ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’.
Wilde’s grave is one of the primary tourist attractions, and the cemetery where his remains are interred is the most populous in the world. However, it is not the only one.
Cemetery as a tourist attraction – Hundreds of thousands of visitors every year
The most popular cemetery in the world
Many famous artists are buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Let’s take a look at the short list : Guillaume Apollinaire Honore de Balzac Vincenzo Bellini Georges Bizet Frederic Chopin Gustave Dore Isadora Duncan Max Ernst Jean de La Fontaine Moliere Yves Montand Jim Morrison Edith Piaf Marcel Proust Simone Signoret Oscar Wilde and many, many others who were not necessarily from France but were somehow connected to France and Paris. Many people would like to have their remains in this company, but there are strict rules (you have to live in Paris or die there, and there is also a waiting list). Anyway, there are also historical monuments, and Pere Lachaise can be a really interesting place to visit when you are in France.
Constance Lloyd is best known as Mrs. Wilde, although many still don’t know this literary giant was actually a married man with two sons. Even less known is the fact that she was an artist too, for some time heavily involved in her husband’s work, while he was still building his reputation, helping him meet interesting people and being open to his experiments in personal life, including a deadly relationship with Bosie Douglas.
Constance Lloyd’s portrait by Louis William Designes (oil on canvas, 1882)
While she prohibited him from seeing his sons after the infamous trial, with devastating consequences, she still helped him until her premature death at only 39 years of age.
Who was Constance Lloyd, who played such an important part in the life of one of the most notorious artists of the last century?
Drawing of Constance, 1884
Her Early Years
Constance Mary Lloyd was born on January 2, 1858, in London to the successful English barrister Horace Lloyd and his Irish cousin Adele (Adelaide) Atkinson. She had an older brother, Otho. The marriage of her parents was not a happy one, and soon after the birth of both kids, they started living separately, Horace spending too much on social life in London and Adele trying to spend as much time as possible in Ireland with her mother, Mary, in Dublin.
As we can read in Otho’s memoirs, Constance’s life was very unhappy, mostly due to the mental instability of her mother, leading to many cases of emotional and probably even physical abuse of Constance in her childhood and adolescent years. It seems that while her father was still alive, although mostly absent, outbursts of Adele were still somehow under control, but after his death from pulmonary infection, soon after her sixteenth birthday, she stayed completely unprotected towards her unpredictable mother’s behavior.
Otho, who was studying at Bristol and Oxford during those years, later described his sister’s life as one full of fear. After a while, he still managed to convince his grandfather, John Horatio Lloyd, to take Constance under his roof and protection. It was also Otho who introduced Constance to Oscar, whom he met in Oxford, where they were studying at the same time, but never became very close, until Speranza, Oscar’s unconventional mother, and Oscar visited the home of Lloyd’s to meet Constance’s and Otho’s aunt from Dublin.
Not Love at First Sight
The meeting between Oscar and Constance in June 1881, immediately after his Poems were published, was a meeting of two attractive young people with a great love for art and a talent for foreign languages. It was not love at first sight. While Constance, with her wavy auburn hair and purplish-brown eyes, tall, slim figure, and aesthetic taste for clothes, definitely looked charming, it was probably her distance that attracted Oscar even more.
To be honest, he was in love with several ladies and had even unsuccessfully pursued some of them before and after meeting Constance. He was also involved in several foggy relationships with young men, already being a regular target of mockery in Punch.
While he obviously made a good impression, being already pretty famous, she charmed him as well. Her intelligence, education (being fluent in five languages, among other things), good manners, and a hint of shyness only contributed to her charm. When Oscar and his mother left Lloyd’s home, he said he thinks he’ll marry that girl.
Yet it was still a surprise for the majority of their mutual friends and acquaintances when he later really proposed to her, and she said yes.
As long as I live, you shall be my lover. (Constance Mary Lloyd)
Oscar and Constance with their son Cyril, 1892
Trouble in Paradise
Despite her family not being too enthusiastic about Oscar, they married after three years of knowing each other on May 29, 1894, at St James’ Church in Paddington. It seemed for some time that both were very much in love. Oscar was apparently very happy in the first two years of marriage, praising his love life to his friends and trying to convince them to get married as well.
They had two sons (Cyril in 1885 and Vivian in 1886) in the first two years of marriage, but after the birth of the second one, the couple became estranged. One of the possible reasons was of a gynecological nature, although we’ll never know what kind of problems she had; they were very likely connected until her death before her 40th birthday.
Oscar started spending most of his nights in hotels, officially working on his literary masterpieces, and Constance increasingly participated in some of the fields where she was already active:
liberal politics,
feminism (she demanded the right for women to serve in Parliament), contemporary fashion (she was an advocate of more practical clothing, being a sensation showing in public in a split skirt, abandoning tight corsets),
translating (early reviews of his work from Dutch, for instance),
writing, still occasionally collaborating with Oscar (among her stuff, an edited version of The Happy Prince was found after her death).
They also enjoyed decorating their way-too-expensive home called House Beautiful together.
Constance was definitely involved in his first book of fairy tales, and she also wrote a book of stories for kids on her own. The title “There Was Once Grandma’s Stories” was published in 1888 by the legendary Ernest Nister and is presented here with a few illustrations by John Lawson.
Constance also became deeply involved in Theosophy, participating in the rituals of The Golden Dawn.
Her Book of Fairy Tales
After becoming parents, they both believed their boys should have access to the best possible literature for kids and obviously believed they should write some by themselves. There was Once (subtitled Grandma’s tales), which was her retelling of famous fairy tales as she remembered being told by her granny.
The collection was published at the legendary Ernest Nister publishing house and includes such fairy tales as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Puss in Boots. It was illustrated by John Lawson (1865-1909).
Constance and Cyril Wilde, 1889
Constance Wilde’s Death
Soon after Oscar’s inclination to men became more and more obvious, and he even started to bring his lovers to their house, which, thanks to their both exquisite taste, became one of the most tastefully decorated homes in England.
When he started an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas in 1891, their marriage was practically over. Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas became fatal for Oscar, eventually convincing him to start a trial against Marquess Queensberry and even (unintentionally) helped his opponent to defeat Oscar at court, which led to the loss of almost all his property and sent him to prison, where he contracted a serious illness.
When Oscar returned from prison, Constance had already moved to France, changing her boys’ surnames to Holland to protect at least some of their privacy. She still loved her husband, trying to help him financially, but demanding that he stay away from his sons.
When he restored a relationship with Bosie, she also cut her financial help. Roughly at the same time, she needed surgery for no clear reason. Some people believe she had a tumor in her uterus; there’s a theory she had an unsuccessful surgical correction of her intimate parts, causing urinary problems, and some even claim she had an undiagnosed and then almost unknown multiple sclerosis.
There’s also a speculation that she died of complications from a venereal disease contracted from her husband or of spinal damage caused by her fall from the stairs (interesting fact: Oscar died after a fall a few years later, too).
Soon after surgery, an infection developed, and she started vomiting, unable to hold liquids in her body.
She died five days later, on April 7, 1898, in Genoa, where she is still buried.
