English · Beginner
Read The Happy Prince and Other Tales in Englishwith every sentence explained
Oscar Wilde · 1888
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde was first published in 1888. In Passage you read the full text in the original English, marked beginner and filed under children and fantasy. It runs to about 16,100 words.
A golden statue that weeps. A bird that sings until its heart breaks. A garden where it is always winter.
High above a city stands the statue of the Happy Prince, covered in gold leaf, with sapphires for eyes and a ruby on his sword. From up there he can see all the misery of the poor, and he cannot stop crying. When a little swallow on its way to Egypt stops to rest at his feet, the Prince asks for a favour, and then another.
This short collection holds five of Oscar Wilde's beautiful fairy tales. In The Nightingale and the Rose, a bird makes a terrible sacrifice for a young student in love. In The Selfish Giant, a giant builds a wall to keep children out of his garden, and spring refuses to come.
Written in clear, musical English, these tales are as moving for adults as they are for children.
- Author
- Oscar Wilde
- First published
- 1888
- Language
- English
- Level
- Beginner
- Genre
- Children, Fantasy
- Length
- About 16,100 words
How it opens
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.
He was very much admired indeed. “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.
Reading The Happy Prince and Other Tales in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in English. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of English and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
