Easter Stories: Classic Tales for the Holy Season

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1928 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Province, Russia, into a family of the old nobility. His best-known works include War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection. During the Revolution of 1905, he came out on the side of the Russian peasantry, but in accordance with his doctrine, he categorically opposed revolutionary violence. He died in 1910.

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. He is best known for his poetry, plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest, and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde also wrote a popular collection of stories for children called The Happy Prince and Other Tales. In the years since their publication, the stories in that collection-including The Selfish Giant-have been dramatized through radio, film, and dance worldwide.

Ruth Sawyer (1880-1970), a central figure in the advancement of children’s book reading and writing, is a recipient of the Regina Medal (1965) for distinguished contribution to the field of children’s literature and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal (1965) for substantial and lasting contributions to children’s literature. A frequent and much admired speaker in the United States, she collaborated on two Caldecott Honor winners, The Christmas Anna Angel (1944) and Journey Cake, Ho! (1954), and her book Roller Skates (1937) was a winner of the Newbery Medal.

Clive Staples Lewis was a British writer, who authored more than 30 books during his prolific career, both fiction (most famously The Chronicles of Narnia) and non-fiction (including such classics as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters). A professor at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Lewis was a contemporary with J.R.R. Tolkein, with whom he was also close friends—both were members of a group called the Inklings. Later in life, Lewis married Joy Davidman and gained two stepsons—Douglas and David Gresham. Lewis died at the age of 64 from kidney failure.