Clarke culled "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" from her incipient novel. While working on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, she enrolled in a writing course co-taught by Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman, which required each student to submit a completed short story before the course began. "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" was Clarke's first published story. Clarke begins by describing his "two very modest aims": "The first is to throw some sort of light on the development of magic in the British Isles at different periods the second is to introduce the reader to some of the ways in which Faerie can impinge upon our own quotidian world, in other words to create a sort of primer to Faerie and fairies." Written in the same postmodern style as Jonathan Strange, the "introduction" to the collection by fictional Professor Sutherland speculates on the "sources" for the stories.
"Introduction" by Professor James Sutherland, Director of Sidhe Studies, University of Aberdeen. In tone, the stories are similar to the clear yet impassive narrator's voice of Jonathan Strange.
The collection is a "sly, frequently comical, feminist revision" of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The volume's focus on "female mastery of the dark arts" is reflected in the ladies of Grace Adieu's magical abilities and the prominent role needlework plays in saving the Duke of Wellington and Mary, Queen of Scots.
The collection, presented as the work of several different writers, contains an introduction and eight fairy tales, seven of which had been previously anthologized. The volume was generally well received, though some critics compared it unfavorably to Jonathan Strange. The stories are written in a pastiche of 18th- and 19th-century styles and their tone is macabre as well as satirical. The stories, which are sophisticated fairy tales, focus on the power of women and are set in the same alternative history as Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), in which magic has returned to England. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in October 2006 by Bloomsbury, is a collection of eight short stories by British writer Susanna Clarke, illustrated by Charles Vess.
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