[In the following review, Chappell offers praise for The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, lauding Lurie's diverse selections of material.]

In such an anthology as Alison Lurie's The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales we should expect to find, as we do, familiar classics like George MacDonald's “The Light Princess,” shining discoveries like Joan Aiken's “The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick,” and stories whose classification as fairy tale is debatable—like Ursula LeGuin's “The Wife's Story.” Perhaps also we should be disappointed not to find a genuine clinker or two; here Donald Barthelme's cutesy and embarrassingly self-conscious “The Glass Mountain” fulfills that dutiful dim role. And I suppose that we ought to be able to mourn the absence of old favorites like Rudyard Kipling's “Weland's Sword” and Saki's “The Story-Teller.”

That is because anthologies, and particularly such highly specialized volumes as this one, are supposed to provide a resplendent peacock fan of choices that reassures and intrigues us and provokes our thinking. Is Bernard Malamud's “The Jewbird” really a fairy tale? If we say that it is only a symbolic fable, have we not diminished some of its mordant humor by divesting it of tradition? And if we disallow “The Jewbird” must we not also set aside Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Feathertop” and John Collier's “The Chaser”?

Alison Lurie was correct in her decision to furnish in her introduction only the sketchiest and most general of definitions: “stories of magic and transformation that we call ‘fairy tales’ (though often they contain no fairies).” It was a stroke of canny authority to include fairy-less stories; otherwise, we should have missed LeGuin's “The Wife's Story,” a little masterpiece of reversed sympathies.

It will not divert the impact of LeGuin's tale to reveal that it is a werewolf story told from the point of view of a wife horrified to observe her mate turn into that blood-mad monster, a human being. This story does not depend upon a surprise ending but upon an inversion of the expectations we bring from our knowledge of the traditional fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm. LeGuin has taken her idea seriously, unfolding it logically and letting her dark ironies develop naturally.

The editor begins her selection with “Uncle David's Nonsensical Story about Giants and Fairies” by Catherine Sinclair. This story was published in 1839; Louise Erdrich's “Old Man Potchikoo,” the final story here, was published 150 years later. Sinclair's story is a straightforward literary fairy tale with some rather heavy didactic baggage; it provides a clear standard by which to judge later and looser usages. Erdrich's radical reworking of a Chippewa legend is a good example of the freedoms contemporary writers are willing to take with tradition.

Most of the stories fall between these extremes of treatment. It is easy to see that a number of modern narrative strategies have become, in a comparatively short time, as conventional as those of the old tales. We have noted one of these in connection with LeGuin's story: the reversal of expectation. A dragon is supposed to be a fearsome and dangerous creature as he ramps huffily about the countryside, but in Kenneth Grahame's “The Reluctant Dragon” he is a peaceable and easygoing old clubman of a reptile. In Jeanne Desy's “The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet” it is the woman who is adventurous, determined and resourceful while the handsome prince is a stupid jerk. In Collier's “The Chaser” the love potion sells for a dollar, but the antidote is very costly. We expect that children shall own dolls, but in “Gertrude's Child” Richard Hughes arranges that dolls own children and the result is an alarming piece of work.

The editor is careful to let us know that her selection is not intended for children, and some of the best stories here are also the most frightening. I would not send a child—or even some of my adult friends—off to dreamland by reading the Hughes story. Or with “The Troll,” T. H. White's deservedly famous excursion into horror. Or with Lucy Lane Clifford's “The New Mother.” This 1882 story was new to me; I'd never even heard of the author. But here is a coolly disturbing tale that will stick with me for a long time, a wonderful discovery.

There are other surprises too. “The King of the Elves” must be Philip K. Dick's only folksy story; I. B. Singer's “Menash's Dream” actually employs the dream frame without cheating—it is a comforting bedtime read. I was a little distressed to find nothing from Sylvia Townsend Warner's magnificent Kingdoms of Elfin, but her gently humorous “Bluebeard's Daughter” is present. Richard Kennedy's “The Porcelain Man” is a nifty fable, as sure and light in touch as a Haydn sonatina.

The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales is the kind of anthology some readers are always longing for. I am thinking of those of us who automatically bypass current bestsellers about Hollywood adultery and knavery in the fashion trade and haunt used bookshops in hopes of finding a copy of Lord Dunsany's Unhappy Far Off Things. Then we pray for a showery autumn afternoon with tea and scones in which to read it.

God bless Alison Lurie! She has done our avid crowd a solid favor.