Wilde, Oscar
Wilde, Oscar (1854–1900),Dublin‐born poet, playwright and aesthete. The child of two parents who had both contributed to the collection of Celtic folklore, he was the author of two important collections of literary fairy tales. Oscar's father, Sir William Wilde, had retold tales of the Irish Sidhe in Irish Popular Superstitions (1852), while his mother, the patriotic poet Lady Jane Wilde or ‘Speranza’, had used materials collected by her husband and herself to write what Yeats considered one of the most important books on the Celtic fairy faith, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland (1887). She also wrote on Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages in 1890.
Wilde's two volumes of fairy tales, The Happy Prince (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891) were written, according to a letter of 1888, ‘partly for children and partly for those who...
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