The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

When Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) published collections of fairy tales in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891) while writing The Picture of Dorian Gray, critics didn't know what to make of them due to their divergence from his persona as a social subversive. Based on his dissertation research, Killeen (Victorian literature, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) presents the evidently first full-length study of these tales that have been marginalized in Wilde studies as anomalies. Through textual and contextual analysis, he interprets them as reflecting both Wilde's conservative Catholic and radical sexual orientations by contrasting fairy tales' aim to socialize children into the status quo and folk tales' challenge of it. Annotation 穢2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)