‘After these disasters,’ he announced, ‘we must be more prudent. I think I shall use my last remaining wish to make myself a king.’
But, all the same, he had to take the queen’s feelings into account; how would she like to be a queen and sit on a throne when she had a nose as long as a donkey’s? And, because only one wish was left, that was the choice before them – either King Blaise had for his consort the ugliest queen in the world; or they used the wish to get rid of the pudding and Blaise the woodcutter had his pretty wife again.
Fanchon, however, thought there was no choice at all. She wanted her nose in its original condition. Nothing more.
So the woodcutter stayed in his cottage and went out to saw logs every day. He did not become a king; he did not even fill his pockets with money. He was only too glad to use the last wish to make things as they had been again.
Moral
Greedy, short-sighted, careless, thoughtless, changeable people don’t know how to make sensible decisions; and few of us are capable of using well the gifts God gave us, anyway.
Mini Modern Classics
RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen
KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion
DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled
SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth
JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate
PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey
ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace
ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman
TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays
ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard
RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain
EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose
G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
JOSEPH CONRAD Youth
ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady
ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast
MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War
HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited
IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights
E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops
SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth
HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle
M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book
JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants
FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony
RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’
D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums
PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint
H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space
MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic
KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss
CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind
ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper
VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita
R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer
FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland
DOROTHY PARKER The Sexes
LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall
JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi
SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon
WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-2 Wife
JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia
H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall
EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake
P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings
VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass
STEFAN ZWEIG Chess
a little history
Penguin Modern Classics were launched in 1961, and have been shaping the reading habits of generations ever since.
The list began with distinctive grey spines and evocative pictorial covers – a look that, after various incarnations, continues to influence their current design – and with books that are still considered landmark classics today.
Penguin Modern Classics have caused scandal and political change, inspired great films and broken down barriers, whether social, sexual or the boundaries of language itself. They remain the most provocative, groundbreaking, exciting and revolutionary works of the last 100 years (or so).
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Modern Classics, we’re publishing fifty Mini Modern Classics: the very best short fiction by writers ranging from Beckett to Conrad, Nabokov to Saki, Updike to Wodehouse. Though they don’t take long to read, they’ll stay with you long after you turn the final page.
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