'Wilde did not converse - he told tales.' Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. They …
Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, is one of the immortals of children's literature. J. M. Barrie first created Peter Pan as a baby, living in secret with the birds and …
'It was the garden that did it - and Mary and Dickon and the creatures - and the Magic.' An orphaned girl, a grim moorland manor with hundreds of empty rooms, strange cries in the …
'Oh grandmama, what great big teeth you have!' Charles Perrault's versions gave classic status to the humble fairy tale, and it is in his telling that the stories of Little Red …
'Once upon a time in mid-winter, when the snowflakes were falling from the sky like down, a queen was sitting and sewing at a window ...' The tales gathered by the Grimm brothers …
A classic of Victorian literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, Tom Brown's Schooldays has long had an influence well beyond the middle-class, …
'Your bed shall be the moorcock's, and your life shall be like the hunted deer's, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons.' Tricked out of his inheritance, shanghaied, …
'Don't you see that we are buried alive?' When Allan Quatermain is approached by Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to search for Sir Henry's missing brother, deep in the …
'this is all a fairy tale...and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true' The Water-Babies (1863) is one of the strangest and most powerful children's …
`The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick,' said the Witch; `so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him …
