Sometimes I love fairy tales retold, but other times I wish that people had just left them alone. This was one of the latter times.

*** Charles Baudelaire - Fairies' Gifts
Less a story than a fictional anecdote leading to a witty epigram; I have a feeling this was included in order to start off with a well-known writer.
The fairies have gathered to hand out 'gifts' and blessings to a bevy of newborns - but one father is disgruntled when it seems his son has been left out...

** Alphonse Daudet - The Fairies of France
Brief screed against science and social progress, blaming 'rational thought' for 'killing the fairies.'
Can't say I'd agree, regardless, but the polemic is rather weak and unconvincing.

**** Catulle Mendès - Dreaming Beauty
OK, this is more what I expected from this book - a subversive inversion of the original tale!
Here, Sleeping Beauty is awoken by the handsome prince - but isn't impressed with what he has to offer. She was perfectly happy asleep.

*** Catulle Mendès - Isolina / Isolin
Disgruntled at not being invited to the baptism of a baby princess, a malicious fairy comes up with an unusual curse on the infant: on her wedding night, she will transform into a boy. Will the fairy's more-benevolent sister come up with a way to mitigate this potential disaster?

*** Catulle Mendès - The Way to Heaven
Separated by a cruel father, a pair of young lovers is destined for tragedy. The princess is imprisoned in a tower, and her paramour attempts suicide. His effort is stalled by angels, who essay to bring him bodily to heaven - but he still has thoughts only for his love.
A bit sentimental for my taste, but I did like the fickleness of the angels.

*** Catulle Mendès - An Unsuitable Guest
An overly-sensitive young prince goes on a hunger strike, saying he is too refined to eat anything but the insubstantial fare of the fairies, of which he has read. Believe it or not, he gets his wish - but not everything turns out as one might've guessed (or, maybe, it does.) I liked the sense of humor here.

*** Catulle Mendès - The Three Good Fairies
Three benevolent and charitable fairies are captured by a misanthropic sorcerer who insists on taking away their magical powers and changing their form. With one grain of mercy, he allows them to choose what he will transform them into. Their choices are surprising - and quite funny.

*** Catulle Mendès - The Last Fairy
This one is in the same vein as the Daudet piece, but is more of a lament than a screed, and as such works better. A fairy is devastated to find that her home and friends have been destroyed by human 'progress,' and searches in vain for a task at which she will be useful and needed. All her abilities seem to have been superseded by modern technology.

*** Catulle Mendès - The Lucky Find
Love and Beauty, personified (and naked), show up at a modern lost-and-found desk, asking the clerk to see if he can find something that they have lost, in our modern world...

** Catulle Mendès - The Wish Granted, Alas!
A woman explains that it's a bad idea to date poet, because you never know when you're going to encounter a fairy who makes all his most flattering - but inherently ridiculous - similes come true. No one actually wants lips like roses...

*** Jules Lemaître - The Suitors of Princess Mimi
A princess must choose between two suitors - a giant, and a Tom Thumb. Both eagerly press their case - but can they compete with a Prince Charming?

** Jules Lemaître - Liette's Notions
A little girl addressed what she perceives as 'unfairness' in the classic fairy tales that she's read. Reveals quite a lot about the 'moral' standards of France at the time of writing, but contains a couple of uncomfortably dated elements.

*** Jules Lemaître - On the Margins of Perrault's Fairy Tales: The White Rabbit and the Four-Leaf Clover
Impressed by the goodness of a peasant boy, a fairy comes up with a peculiarly convoluted plan to reward him for his selfless behavior, starting with giving a princess an adorable bunny that can only eat four-leafed clover.

*** Paul Arène - The Ogresses
Framed as a reminiscence of a childhood friend. The author tells us of a boy who, instead of pining after imaginary princesses, fancied himself in love with an ogre's daughters.

**** Jules Ricard - Fairy Morgane's Tales: Nocturne II
Asked for a 'rosy' story, a fairy relates the tale of an unloved woman who is happy to be transformed into a golden statue in order to receive the adulation and admiration of strangers whose feelings she cannot return. Will this be enough for her?

*** Marcel Schwob - Bluebeard's Little Wife
Well, that was weird and vaguely pervy. But I didn't dislike it.
A vignette relating the antics of two children playing at 'fairytales' - one of them oddly, bloodthirstily masochistic.

**** Marcel Schwob - The Green She-Devil
A child meets a wild green girl in the forest, and her family takes her in. Their efforts to 'civilize' the foundling come to naught - as a matter of fact, the influence may end up running in the other direction. I liked this one rather a lot.

** Marcel Schwob - Cice
I'm not sure I really "got" this one. I guess the carriage at the end is a funeral hearse? But the irony of the sulking little girl thinking it's a prince's carriage seemed overly random.

** Marcel Schwob - Mandosiane
When her best friend is mysteriously struck by paralysis (or cursed?); a girl goes on a life's journey to try to find a cure; guided by dreams of the fairy queen Mandosiane. However, as in the previous offering from this writer, I found the tragedy too random to really resonate.

***** Willy - Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned
"The only talisman that can help you open a door is a crowbar, and you would be wrong to count on magic wands capable of finding treasure - which in fact would surely be confiscated by the State."
This one is cynically hilarious. An innocent young couple, on the eve of their wedding, are approached by a ragtag band of characters, mostly villains from popular fairy tales. In turn, each tells the lovers how the stories got it wrong: real life isn't quite like the tales.

*** Henri de Régnier - The Living Door Knocker
Symbolist story, rather than fairy tale. Orphaned and alone in the world, a man lives isolated within his mansion. When he ventures out (in pursuit of an alluring woman) his actions lead to tragedy - and the door knocker of his home serves to remind him of his victim. Very allegorical. I had mixed feelings about its messages.

*** Rachilde - The Mortis
A 'Last Man' tale. An apocalypse of flowers. The style and themes reminded me of (a much much shorter!) version of Shelley's 'Last Man,' but this story is both more Decadent and more flowery (literally).

* Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen - Sleeping Beauty Didn't Wake Up
If you are one of those people that thinks that making characters "children" or "babies" is an automatic recipe for cuteness; you may like this unbearably twee story.

**** Jean Lorrain - Princess of the Red Lilies
Gorgeous! I kept imagining illustrations by Edmund Dulac or someone of that ilk while reading this. A princess, immured in a convent, wanders around the cloister gardens with her attending nuns... but this virginal girl, kept far from men, is yet a literal femme fatale...

**** Jean Lorrain - Princess Snowflower
Pretty much a straight retelling of Snow White - with the addition of both the panoply of Christian mythology and a dark and bloody edge. The tale feels a bit oddly and unexpectedly truncated, but I still really liked it.

**** Jean Lorrain - Mandosiane in Captivity
A princess formed from an exquisite piece of antique embroidery would be most unwise to pay heed to the blandishments of an intruding mouse...

** Renée Vivien - Prince Charming
Maybe the gender-swapped/disguise plot was very titillating to contemporary readers, but the way the story's set up, it just doesn't make sense.
Also, this story has no fairy tale elements. <spoiler>A young girl is best friends with the effeminate little boy next door, and swears to marry him when she is older. And so she does - but it turns out that the person she married is an imposter - her husband is actually the boy's tomboy sister, who she never got along with. </spoiler>

** Albert Mockel - The Story of the Prince of Valandeuse
I found this annoying. It's a sententious allegory on the role of the (male) poet, and I came away with the feeling that I didn't really agree with it.

*** Albert Mockel - The Pleasant Surprise
A mildly humorous little story: an anecdote about a fairy who gives a baby prince the magical gift of "Low Expectations." Everyone is outraged - until the fairy tells them she has given the boy the gift of "Pleasant Surprises."

** Pierre Veber - The Last Fairy
Rather self-congratulatory in tone. The last fairy, inheritor of all the magics and charms of her kind, travels to the big city in search of adventure - and realizes that all her powers are as nothing in the face of modern technology.

**Anatole France - The Seven Wives of Bluebeard
**Anatole France - The Story of the Duchess of Cicogne and of Monsieur de Boulingrin
One of these, of course, is a retelling of 'Bluebeard,' the other is actually 'Sleeping Beauty.' I could see that readers at the time may have found these very witty - France satirizes an overly-formal writing style (at least, I think it's a satire?), full of digressions, and although it's clever, it's also very wordy, and these two pieces had some trouble catching my interest. I also must admit to being very tired when I read them, so maybe it was just me...

** Emile Bergerat - The 28-Kilometer Boots
** Emile Bergerat - Cinderella Arrives by Automobile
Both of these are told as if the author is relating a dream that he had (or perhaps he did have these dreams!) - one about the legendary 7-league (or 20 Km, I guess) boots, and one about Cinderella, mixing up the fairy tale elements with "modern" life, and making much of "it doesn't make sense, because it was a dream!" Now, normally I find dreams fascinating, but Bergerat's writing style just didn't win me over.

*** Guillaume Apollinaire - Cinderella Continued, or the Rat and the Six Lizards
A pun-filled short piece about how, after the events of which we have heard that culminated in a royal marriage, Cinderella's magically-transformed footman and coach driver embark on a life of banditry.

**** Claude Cahun - Cinderella, the Humble and Haughty Child
Well, now! I've never before really thought of Cinderella as a masochist, or the Prince as a pervy submissive foot fetishist. (Well, maybe a little...) The story could've gone a bit further with its development of the idea, but I still enjoyed it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Princeton University Press for the review copy of this book! Glad to have an opportunity to read some of these historically interesting and often overlooked stories.