Winner of the 1967 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Angela Carter's brilliant imagination and starting intensity of style explore and extend the nature and boundaries of love.

'She was, among other things, a quirky, original, and baroque stylist . . . her vocabulary a mix of finely tuned phrase, luscious adjective, witty aphorism, and hearty, up-theirs vulgarity' Margaret Atwood, Observer

'Angela Carter was a great writer . . . a real one-off, nothing like her on the planet' Salman Rushdie

Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes-from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch.... It leaves behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling