Abstract
The fairy-tales of Hans Christian Andersen are often presented as sources used by Oscar Wilde in writing his own fairy-tales. The first tentative suggestion of this kind appeared as early as 1888 in an anonymous review of The Happy Price and Other Stories, in the Pall Mall Gazette, where the reviewer noted that if the author echoes Andersen then he echoes him very pleasantly.
In the 20th century, the hypothesis of Wilde's inspiration by Andersen's stories has been accepted by some scholars, such as Isobel Murray, Jack Zipes or Christopher Nassaar, as a fact. Others, like Anne Markey, Jacqueline Banerjee or Kirsten S.
Malmkjaer have attempted to trace down the nature of the influence and describe it in detail. However, they approached the task with an a priori conviction that Wilde's stories had been, in fact, inspired by Andersen.
This conviction has limited their assessment of the inspiration to a description of semblances and differences between the stories, without further consideration of other possible sources and reasons behind them, which I will undertake.