The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

An elegant collection of eight magical short stories and novellas, set in the same magical-realist universe as Susanna Clarke’s celebrated debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

The book invites readers into an alternate, enchanted England, where the world of Faerie is not as distant as it may seem. Once they cross an invisible threshold, its characters must contend with brazen princesses, vengeful owls, women who decide human destinies through embroidery, and endless paths through dark forests, where houses never look the same twice. Its protagonists include a vain Regency-era clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish physician, Mary, Queen of Scots, an ordinary mortal girl trying to win her beloved back from the Queen of Faerie, and even the Duke of Wellington, who finds himself in Neverwhere — from Neil Gaiman’s universe — while searching for his favorite horse. Familiar figures also appear throughout the collection, including Jonathan Strange himself and the legendary Raven King.

The title story, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, follows three provincial ladies from Gloucestershire who secretly practice a distinctive “female” form of magic in the early nineteenth century, proving to the arrogant male magicians of London that enchantment is not an exclusively male domain.

The stories retain the author’s distinctive Victorian-inspired style, enriched by an introduction and extensive pseudo-scholarly annotations.