A House of Pomegranates

By Oscar Wilde

Not your typical modern-day fairy tale…

A House of Pomegranates is a collection of four fairy tales by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1891. Wilde himself once said, "These tales are not intended for very young children," warning parents to not ruin the imaginative minds of their children by reading these stories to them.

Although you won't find any happy endings in these brilliantly written short stories, they are filled with beautiful language, whimsical imagination, and varying messages on love. "The Young King" touches on the love of God and humility. "The Birthday of the Infanta" touches on sorrows experienced when love is not returned. "The Fisherman and His Soul" explores forbidden love and the lengths one goes to achieve it. "The Star-Child" completes the book by touching on forgiveness and redemption in the name of love.

This freshly rendered edition of A House of Pomegranates captures Oscar Wilde's extraordinary language, timeless themes, and captivating storytelling that is sure to leave readers enthralled. Includes a new foreword by award-winning author Russell Davis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WordFire Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781680575323

Oscar Wilde

Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.

Book preview

A House of Pomegranates

A House of Pomegranates

OSCAR WILDE

Foreword by

RUSSELL DAVIS

Edited by

LILA HOLLEY

WordFire Press

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde

Originally published in 1891. This work is in the public domain.

This new edition edited by Lila Holley

Foreword by copyright © 2023 by Russell Davis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-532-3

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-533-0

Jacketed Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68057-534-7

Cover design by Lila Holley and Allyson Longueira

Cover artwork copyright © Ivan | Adobe Stock

Published by WordFire Press, LLC

PO Box 1840

Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Edition 2023

Printed in the USA

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Contents

Foreword

The Young King

The Birthday of the Infanta

The Fisherman and His Soul

The Star-Child

Publisher’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Editor

WordFire Classics

Editor’s Dedication

To Kevin J. Anderson, Allyson Longueira, Gwyneth Gibby, and my cohort colleagues at Western Colorado University GPCW-Publishing, thank you for your support throughout this amazing journey.

Foreword

Once Upon a Time in 1891

It is said that Oscar Wilde’s last words, uttered on November 30, 1900, in Room 16 of the Hôtel d’Alsace in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in Paris, France were, My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go. Like many famous last words, there’s no way to confirm this was the case, but it’s difficult to imagine that one of the greatest writers of his day didn’t have something to say as he reached the end of his life. Do writers ever really run out of words? While we don’t know with certainty what Wilde’s last words were, we do know that the he left the world and the wallpaper won the duel and hung around, at least for a time.

Wilde was a playwright, a poet, a novelist, and an essayist who drew quite a bit of attention during his forty-six years of life. His cause of death seems to be a matter of some contention: syphilis, meningitis, a severe middle ear infection. But his cause of life was the unabashed written word, and his lifestyle landed him in trouble. Somewhat arguably, his most famous work, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is how most people know him. Certainly, it’s a powerful story with a character that has been adapted on stage and screen many times. Few people think of him as a writer of fairy tales, but in fact, Wilde wrote quite a number of them.

His first collection of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, was published in 1888, and was intended for children. It included five stories. The work you’re about to read, A House of Pomegranates, was published in 1891 and included four new stories.

In an introduction to the stories, Wilde warns that, These tales are not intended for very young children, because I do not think that very young children would be likely to understand them. Parents, who want to ruin the imaginative minds of their children, to whose care they confide them, by stopping the flowing fountain of wonder with the dusty rubbish of fact, had better never read them to their children at all. I suspect Wilde, whose work tends toward cynical darkness, was not a fan of his own prose, regardless of how it might be critically received.

There are four stories in this collection, The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul, and my personal favorite, The Star-Child. All four stories are, in one form or another, about different kinds of human love, about love of family, love of country and love of God, and about what happens when those loves are misguided, misdirected, and distorted. It might be argued that these themes are the fundamental questions of Wilde's life. He did, after all, spend two years in prison for what was then deemed gross indecency, and what we now accept as nothing more than the simple sexual preference of homosexuality, though Wilde himself is said to have been bisexual. Undoubtedly, in late 1800's England, such preferences were deemed criminal.

As for the fairy tales included here? Wilde is a fantastic storyteller with a lush, lyrical command of language. These stories are deep, rich, provocative and darkly funny. They don’t really have happy endings, and their characters are frequently cast in shadows, mired in selfishness, prejudice, and self-absorption. They are stories about people, about love and about what happens when people find themselves in situations of great power only to discover that, despite this power, they are seldom able to determine their own fate. And if Wilde is commenting–as I think he is–on the failings of his own world and society, he does so with the subtle cut of a very sharp knife.

Similar themes have appeared in stories since the beginning of recorded human expression, but I’m not sure they’ve been articulated in such a delicate, beautiful way as they are in these stories. His work often makes me feel all too aware of my own failings as a writer of prose. Wilde’s command of the language, of immersive narrative, is uniquely his own.

I invite you to explore this collection at a leisurely pace. It’s easy to read fairy tales quickly, but the work here is such that it’s worth taking your time. Wilde is a deliberate writer, I believe, with each word chosen with care. Influenced by the original Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and a deep Christian aesthetic, these are stories for adults, that have as much to say about the real as they do about the unreal. I hope you enjoy them as much I did.

—Russell Davis

Elko, Nevada

January 2023

The Young King

It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the ground, according to the ceremonious usage of the day, and had retired to the Great Hall of the Palace, to receive a few last lessons from the Professor of Etiquette; there being some of them who had still quite natural manners, which in a courtier is, I need hardly say, a very grave offence.

The lad—for he was only a lad, being but sixteen years of age—was not sorry at their departure and had flung himself back with a deep sigh of relief on the soft cushions of his embroidered couch, lying there, wild-eyed, and open-mouthed, like a brown woodland Faun, or some young animal of the forest newly snared by the hunters.

And, indeed, it was the hunters who had found him, coming upon him almost by chance as, bare-limbed and pipe in hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to be. The child of the old King’s only daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her in station—a stranger, some said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing, had made the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist from Rimini, to whom the Princess had shown much, perhaps too much honour, and who had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his work in the Cathedral unfinished—he had been, when but a week old, stolen away from his mother’s side, as she slept, and given into the charge of a common peasant and his wife, who were without children of their own, and lived in a remote part of the forest, more than a day’s ride from the town. Grief, or the plague, as the court physician stated, or, as some suggested, a swift Italian poison administered in a cup of spiced wine, slew, within an hour of her wakening, the white girl who had given him birth, and as the trusty messenger who bare the child across his saddle-bow stooped from his weary horse and knocked at the rude door of the goatherd’s hut, the body of the Princess was being lowered into an open grave that had been dug in a deserted churchyard, beyond the city gates, a grave where it was said that another body was also lying, that of a young man of marvellous and foreign beauty, whose hands were tied behind him with a knotted cord, and whose breast was stabbed with many red wounds.

Such, at least, was the story that men whispered to each other. Certain it was that the old King, when on his deathbed, whether moved by remorse for his great sin, or merely desiring that the kingdom should not pass away from his line, had had the lad sent for, and, in the presence of the Council, had acknowledged him as his heir.

And it seems that from the very first moment of his recognition he had shown signs of that strange passion for beauty that was destined to have so great an influence over his life. Those who accompanied him to the suite of rooms set apart for his service, often spoke of the cry of pleasure that broke from his lips when he saw the delicate raiment and rich jewels that had been prepared for him, and of the almost fierce joy with which he flung aside his rough leathern tunic and coarse sheepskin cloak. He missed, indeed, at times the fine freedom of his forest life, and was always apt to chafe at the