The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, By Angela Carter

Angela Carter's groundbreaking collection of feminist fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber and other Stories (1979), followed three years on from her translation of Charles Perrault, a lawyer at the court of Louis XIV.

While her own stories stood the genre on its head, her translation made his tales rather more subversive than intended: in "Cinderella", a powerful patron proves more useful than beauty; in "Bluebeard", a wife outwits her murderous husband.

Jack Zipes's illuminating preface introduces her radical work to a new audience. He describes a writer who amazed Margaret Atwood not only by looking "so much like the Fairy Godmother" but by being so much like the Fairy Godmother.