Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Helen Simpson, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.

In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.