Essays by A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt speaks on myths, legends and fairytales and how it has affected and influenced her own stories...

Fairy Stories: The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

Making up worlds is as natural and as necessary to human beings as breathing and sleeping...

My own fairy stories are written primarily for the pleasure of entering that other world, a world of imaginary apples and forest paths, greener and darker than any encountered in everyday life, a world of powerful beasts and satisfactory endings. But they are modern literary stories and they do play quite consciously with a postmodern creation and recreation of old forms.

More essays by A.S. Byatt