I think I like this just slightly better than Wilde's Happy Prince collection, not that I don't enjoy its title story, but overall Pomegranates is a little less mawkish in its moralism, although the final story in the collection, "The Star-Child," certainly wallows in its sacrificial sentiments. Of all Wilde's short stories, though, I think my favourite, which I've just read here for the first time, is "The Fisherman and His Soul," which reads like a deliberate response to Anderson's "The Little Mermaid," another fairy story I've always enjoyed.

I have to say, though, points to "The Birthday of the Infanta," which has a conclusion of breathtakingly thoughtless cruelty, and is therefore far more effective in its moralism than stories such as "The Nightingale and the Rose" (from Prince).