First Publications
"The Man Who Loved a Double Bass" first appeared in Storyteller Contest, July 1962. "A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home" was first published in Nonesuch, in Autumn 1965 and "A Victorian Fable (with Glossary)" was also published in Nonesuch, in Summer/Autumn 1966.
"A Souvenir of Japan", "The Executioners Beautiful Daughter", "The Loves of Lady Purple", "The Smile of Winter", "Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest", "Flesh and the Mirror", "Master", "Reflections" and "Elegy for a Freelance", written between 1970 and 1973, were all originally published in Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (Quartet Books, 1974).
"The Bloody Chamber" and "The Tigers Bride" first appeared in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Victor Gollancz, 1979). "The Courtship of Mr Lyon" was originally published in British Vogue , "Puss-in-Boots" appeared in the anthology The Straw and the Gold, edited by Emma Tennant (Pierrot Books, 1979). "The Erl-King" appeared in Bananas (October, 1977), "The Snow Child" was broadcast on the BBC Radio Four programme Not Now, Im Listening. "The Lady of the House of Love" was first published in The Iowa Review (Summer/Autumn 1975), "The Werewolf" in South-West Arts Review (No 2, October, 1977), "The Company of Wolves" in Bananas (April, 1977) and "Wolf-Alice" in Stand (Winter, 1978, vol. 2, No 2).
"Black Venus" first appeared in Next Editions in 1980, "The Kiss" was originally published in Harpers and Queen, in 1977, "Our Lady of the Massacre" appeared in The Saturday Night Reader as "Captured by the Red Man" in 1979. "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" was published in Interzone in 1982, as was "Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Nights Dream";. "Peter and the Wolf" is from Firebird 1, 1982. A version of "The Kitchen Child" was published in Vogue, 1979, and "The Fall River Axe Murder" originally appeared in The London Review of Books in 1981 under the title "Mis-en-Scene for Parricide".
A version of "Lizzies Tiger" was first published in Cosmopolitan in September 1981, and broadcast on Radio Three. "John Fords Tis Pity Shes a Whore" originally appeared in Granta 25, Autumn, 1988. "Gun for the Devil" was written as a draft for a screenplay and published in American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (Chatto & Windus, 1993). "The Merchant of Shadows" was published in the London Review of Books in October 1989. "Alice in Prague or The Curious Room" appeared in Spell, [Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature], (vol 5, 1990) and "The Ghost Ships" was first published in American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (Chatto & Windus, 1993). "In Pantoland" was originally published in the Guardian in December 1991. "Ashputtle or The Mothers Ghost" was first published in the Virago Book of Ghost Stories (Virago, 1987), and a shorter version was published in Soho Square. A version of "Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene" originally appeared in FMR Magazine in February 1992.
"The Snow Pavilion" is published here for the first time. "The Scarlet House" was originally published in A Book of Contemporary Nightmares (Michael Joseph, 1977) and "The Quilt Maker" was published in Sex and Sensibility: Stories by Contemporary Women Writers from Nine Countries (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1981).