Maurice Magre (1877-1941) was one of the most far-ranging and extravagant French writers of fantastic fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the finest of them, because of the fertility and versatility of his imagination and the manner and purpose for which he deployed it.

This volume, the first of a series of twelve dedicated to Magre’s works, offers thirteen stories mostly written between 1900 and 1905, that belong to the genre called conte merveilleux, often inadequately translated as fairy tales, but more accurately rendered as tales of enchantment, or, in this case, disenchantment.

Although these stories might be considered atypical of Magre’s work, variants of the symbolic figure of Claire d'Amour continued to recur in his work. The flower of youth was replaced in the fullness of time by other blooms, but that motif remained perennial in numerous variations.