Wilde’s Legacy: Fairy Tales, Laurence Housman, and the Expression of “Beautiful Untrue Things”

Abstract

Kooistra analyzes Laurence Housman’s fairy-tale collection The House of Joy as a deliberate response to Oscar Wilde’s A House of Pomegranates. Published at the end of 1895, in the aftermath of Wilde’s arrest, trials, and imprisonment for gross indecency, The House of Joy invokes Wilde’s earlier fairy-tale collection in its title, themes, and format, but offers a more optimistic message about the possibilities of transformation. Building on Wilde’s understanding of “The House Beautiful” as a potent political symbol, Housman used the architecture of the book and the symbolism of pictured fantasy to represent a radical vision of aesthetic beauty integrated with social justice.

My research was facilitated by the knowledgeable and helpful librarians at Bryn Mawr Rare Books and Manuscripts; the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library; and the Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. I would also like to thank Mark Samuels Lasner for access to his collection of Housman materials at the University of Delaware Library, and Joseph Bristow for his advice and encouragement.