The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde is both a fun take on fairy tales as well as an excellent example of using fantasy to examine contemporary issues.

Unfortunately, a lot of Wilde criticism has ignored his prose poems and, by extension, his two collections of fairy tales. This is partly due to many scholars and pop critics preferring to (over)emphasize the more sensationalistic aspects of his work and his life, and moralizing would undermine those broad, sweeping assessments.

This book, bringing both collections together, is an interesting read as just what they are, fairy tales. Some may work for you, some may not, but they can easily be understood within the standard definitions of fairy tales.

This becomes even more interesting when included in a broader look at Wilde's complete literary output. There are elements here, usually thematic, that present themselves in other works. Seeing how Wilde addressed them here speaks to what he did in other works. He was a product of his time, however much he fought aspects of it (poverty being a major issue which is also confronted in this book), and moralizing was what writers of almost every type did at the time. As he acknowledges in one of the tales, telling a tale with a moral is dangerous.

Highly recommended for readers of fairy tales, Victorian literature, and, of course, fans of Oscar Wilde.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )