The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde - Oscar Wilde

AUTHOR: Oscar Wilde

GENRE: Short Story Anthology, Classics

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A compilation of two of Wilde’s three published short story anthologies. Garnished with illustrations by French illustrator Phillippe Jullian, and an afterword by Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland.

Oscar Wilde is one of my favourite writers, so it goes without saying that I have read almost all of his works. He had published three anthologies in this lifetime. Of these, the stories from ‘The Happy Prince and other stories’ (1888) and ‘A House of Pomegranates’ (1891) are included in this special 70th anniversary gift edition.

As modern readers, we assume ‘fairy stories’ to be stories with fairies such as Tinker Bell or Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. However, the traditional meaning of the term defines a fairy story as any traditional story written for children and usually involving imaginary creatures or magic. Wilde make use of his Irish heritage to imbue his stories with a strong sense of lore and an underlying foundation of religious or moral ethics. But there are no actual fairies in his tales, and if you are a newbie to his works, it is better to keep this in mind.

Some of my favourite stories by Wilde are part of the ‘The Happy Prince’ collection. So I was glad to reread ‘The Happy Prince’, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, ‘The Selfish Giant’, and ‘The Devoted Friend’ yet again. The fifth story of this anthology – ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ – isn’t a big favourite of mine, but it still has enough to recommend it.

‘A House of Pomegranates’, however, isn’t among my beloved Wilde works. Of the four stories therein, I count only ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’ as a good story. Two of the other three (‘The Young King’ and ‘The Fisherman and His Soul’) are decent but have too many subtracks that serve mainly to showcase Wilde’s descriptive writing. The last story, ‘The Star-Child’, is wonderful except for the ending.

All of the above are stories I have read many times over the years, but I still enjoyed my reread of them through this book. Of the nine stories in the book, four are strong favourites of mine (5 stars each), and two are good enough (3.5-4 stars.) That said, I am an attuned classics reader, so I know what to expect from Wilde’s works. Some of the content might seem dated to modern eyes, and some of the content is quite religious, which might take secular readers by surprise. I’ll just say, every classic work must be evaluated the content keeping in mind the writer’s personal beliefs and the societal standards in THAT era, and not by your 21st century perspective.

As these stories are all in the public domain, you do need to have something more in this book to recommend it. There are two things specific to this edition:

1. A critical note penned by Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland: This isn’t too lengthy but it offers a nice background to the stories and to Wilde’s belief system.

2. The illustrations by “celebrated twentieth-century artist and aesthete Phillippe Jullian”: I admit, the illustrations were the main reason for my requesting a collection that I had already read every single story of. But the sketches proved to be disappointing. I didn’t find any of them adding value to the story. They look more like children’s scribbles than like something sketched by a popular artist. They might have worked better with colour, or his artistic style might just be an acquired taste, but in the current form, not a single illustration was memorable to me.

3.75 stars, based on the average of my ratings for all the stories.

My thanks to Duckworth Books and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.