Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales

Book excerpt: This book offers an innovative revaluation of Oscar Wilde's two collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). Providing a comprehensive account of Wilde's familiarity with Irish folklore, this study challenges the prevailing consensus that the stories draw heavily on such material. By emphasizing Wilde's own stated views on the subject - and so contesting the assumption that he simply shared the well-documented interests of his parents, Sir William Wilde and Lady Jane Wilde ('Speranza') - the book relocates the stories within a variety of literary, cultural, and narrative traditions, both Irish and European. Acknowledging Wilde's often ambivalent and ambiguous statements about his Irish national identity, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales: Origins and Contexts offers a more nuanced understanding of the importance of Ireland to Wilde's art. The detailed readings of the fairy tales show that, despite the stories' continuing appeal to children, Wilde intended his fairy tales for a predominantly adult audience. The book also demonstrates the ways in which, despite their eerie and disturbing content, these fairy tales reaffirmed conservative values. *** "This superb analysis...presents a new and persuasive reading of Wilde's fairy tales. .... Highly recommended." - Choice, April 2012 *** "Markey's text is relevant to cultural studies scholars and literary historians of the Victorian era because of the attention to Anglo-Irish and European literary contexts, history, and culture, and the intriguing interpretations of Oscar Wilde's literary fairy tales." - Victorian Studies, Vol. 55, No. 4, Summer 2013~