After a period of decline, Gothic literature underwent a revival at the end of the 1800s. As the century turned, women writers such as Vernon Lee, Mary Coleridge, and Rosamund Mariott Watson left an indelible mark on fantasy and horror literature. Like Medusa herself, their poetry and short stories embody the very essence of magic and monstrosity.
Curated and annotated by award-winning fantasy author and Victorianist Theodora Goss, this collection of rare and strange gems serves as a tantalizing sampler of work by fin-de-siècle women writers, whose legacy still echoes in the speculative fiction we know and love today.
A monumental career retrospective
This vibrant collection brings together World Fantasy Award winner Goss's exquisite interpretations of and variations on familiar folk and fairy tales. The [poems and stories] span the length of Goss's career ... All approach well-known stories from unexpected angles and with deep empathy for the characters ... The abundance of pieces sometimes has the effect of a musical fugue: common motifs, places, and characters echo through the works, with each reappearance adding something fresh.
-Publishers Weekly A wicked stepsister frets over all the ways in which she failed to receive her mother's love. A lost woman travels through an enchanted forest looking for someone who can remind her of her name. A girl must wear down seven pairs of shoes to gain help from a witch. A fox makes a life with a human, but neither can deny their true natures. A young woman returns to her childhood home and the fantastic stories she left there. A man lets himself be taken prisoner by the Snow Queen to prove that the woman who loves him would walk barefoot through the ice to save him. Medusa cuts her hair for love.PRAISE FOR THEODORA GOSS
In the tradition of great modern fantasists like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, Theodora Goss's sublime tales are modern classics-beautiful, sly, sensual and deeply moving . . . I envy any reader encountering Goss's work for the first time. -Elizabeth Hand, winner of the Mythopoeic, Nebula, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards
The elegance of Goss's work has never ceased to amaze me. It feels effortless, but endlessly evocative and suggestive, flowing with the rhythms of both the natural world and the intimate socio-familial cosmos. Goss's language fits together like gems in a complex crown, a diadem of images and motifs, resting gently on the head, but with a deceptive weight. -Catherynne M. Valente, winner of the Mythopoeic, Locus, Hugo, Otherwise and Theodore Sturgeon awards
With cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein and interior black and white illustrations by Paula Arwen Owen.
A monumental career retrospective
This vibrant collection brings together World Fantasy Award winner Goss's exquisite interpretations of and variations on familiar folk and fairy tales. The [poems and stories] span the length of Goss's career ... All approach well-known stories from unexpected angles and with deep empathy for the characters ... The abundance of pieces sometimes has the effect of a musical fugue: common motifs, places, and characters echo through the works, with each reappearance adding something fresh.
-Publishers WeeklyFor Goss, fairy tales are less a set of texts than a language she's become fluent in ... the result is a lyrical, resonant voice and a vision not quite like anyone else's.
-LocusPRAISE FOR THEODORA GOSS
In the tradition of great modern fantasists like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, Theodora Goss's sublime tales are modern classics-beautiful, sly, sensual and deeply moving . . . I envy any reader encountering Goss's work for the first time.
-Elizabeth Hand
Goss's language fits together like gems in a complex crown, a diadem of images and motifs, resting gently on the head, but with a deceptive weight.
-Catherynne M. Valente
Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Through prose and poetry, Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest-and many bright eyes gleam back.
-Margo Lanagan
With cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein and interior black and white illustrations by Paula Arwen Owen.
I was expecting this to be good, but it's wonderful. Seeing these pieces together makes me realize what a vivid, authentic and important voice Goss is. These are real fairytales, magical, unsettling, touching, and brilliant. I loved every word. -Jo Walton, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo award-winning author of Among Others
Fairy tales are clothing, and to retell them is fashion. The fashion of these particular stories and poems is an abundance of lace, roses and porcelain contrasting with fur, snow and blood. -Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times
Goss takes obvious delight in reweaving classic European folk tales to reveal new, often deeply feminist, perspectives . . . This toothsome collection is best read in one go. -Publishers Weekly, starred review
A young woman hunts for her wayward shadow at the school where she first learned magic-while another faces a test she never studied for as ice envelopes the world. The tasks assigned a bookish boy lead him to fateful encounters with lizards, owls, trolls and a feisty, sarcastic cat. A bear wedding is cause for celebration, the spinning wheel and the tower in the briar hedge get to tell their own stories, and a kitchenmaid finds out that a lost princess is more than she seems. The sea witch reveals what she hoped to gain when she took the mermaid's voice. A wiser Snow White sets out to craft herself a new tale.
In these eight stories and twenty-three poems, World Fantasy Award winner Theodora Goss retells and recasts fairy tales by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde. Sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious, always lyrical, the works gathered in Snow White Learns Witchcraft re-center and empower the women at the heart of these timeless narratives. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Jane Yolen, in her introduction, proclaims that Goss transposes, transforms, and transcends times, eras, and old tales with ease. But also there is a core of tough magic that runs through all her pieces like a river through Faerie . . . I am ready to reread some of my new favorites.
More praise for Snow White Learns Witchcraft
Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Sometimes the stories' new garments are classic and mythic, sometimes they're up-to-the-minute, twenty-first-century creations . . . Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest-and many bright eyes gleam back. -Margo Lanagan, New York Times-bestselling and World Fantasy Award-winning author of Tender Morsels
Theodora Goss's Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a gorgeous, lyric collection of fairy tale retellings. Goss has the ability-the witchcraft-to be able to see the heart of the tale, and show it, polished and reflected and new, to the reader. -Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians
This collection does what the best songs and poems and spells do: slips gently into your consciousness, then slowly changes the way you see the world. -Fran Wilde, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo finalist and author of the award-winning Bone Universe trilogy
Cover art by Ruth Sanderson