The Project Gutenberg Project

He looked up, and just fornent him there sat on his haunches a comely-looking greyhound. 

‘God save you,’ said Paddy, every hair in his head standing up as straight as a sally twig.

‘Save you kindly,’ answered the greyhound—leaving out God, the beast, bekase he was the divil.

- W.B. Yeats (ed.), Irish Fairy Tales (1892) illustrated by Jack B. Yeats [full text]

She was a Russian Princess, and had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer. The sledge was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan’s wings lay the little Princess herself. Her long ermine cloak reached right down to her feet, on her head was a tiny cap of silver tissue, and she was as pale as the Snow Palace in which she had always lived.

- Oscar Wilde, ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) illustrated by Charles Robinson [full text]

The waters opened; the waves rolled up, curled, rolled into wreaths and hooks and drops of foam, which flecked the dark green curves with silvery bells. First appeared a living dragon with fire-darting eyes, long flickering moustaches, glittering scales of green all ruffled, with terrible spines erect, and the joints of the fore-paws curling out jets of red fire.

- William Elliot Griffis, Japanese Fairy World: Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan (1887) illustrated by Ozawa Nankoku [full text]

If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.

- Oscar Wilde, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) illustrated by Charles Robinson [full text]

For weeks the monkey and the shark breakfasted together, and it was a wonder that the tree had any fruit left for them.

- Andrew Lang (ed.), ‘The Heart of a Monkey’ in The Lilac Fairy Book (1910) illustrated by H.J. Ford. [full text]