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CHAPTER 1

THE SELFISH GIANT (by Oscar Wild)

A. THE AUTHOR

Author, playwright and poet Oscar Wilde was a
popular literary figure in late Victorian England.

After graduating from Oxford University, he
lectured as a poet, art critic and a leading proponent
of the principles of aestheticism. In 1891, he
published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel
which was panned as immoral by Victorian critics,
but is now considered one of his most notable works.
As a dramatist, many of Wilde’s plays were well
received including his satirical comedies Lady
Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal
Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his most famous
play. Unconventional in his writing and life, Wilde’s affair with a young man led to
his arrest on charges of "gross indecency" in 1895. He was imprisoned for two
years and died in poverty three years after his release at the age of 46.

B. STORY

THE SELFISH GIANT

Every afternoon as they were coming home from school, the children used to go
and play in the Giant’s garden. It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass.
Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were
twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of

pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and
sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to
them. "How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.
One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre,
and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had
said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to