Nights at the Circus
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529955606
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00

Nights at the Circus

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Dec 2025
Paperback
6 Dec 1994
EBook
31 Oct 2012
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The Vintage Classics WEIRD GIRLS series ventures into the depraved, delectable depths of women’s weird fiction with nine novels by nine pioneering women.

Vintage Classics WEIRD GIRLS: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of women’s weird fiction.

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake?

Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH WATERS

**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

'A spellbinding achievement' Literary Review

'Raunchy, raucous...a rich, turn of the 19th century world, which reeks of human and animal variety' The Times

The Vintage Classics WEIRD GIRLS series ventures into the dark heart of the uncanny with disturbing, and disturbed, protagonists who dare to defy the norm. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529955606
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Angela Carter

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.

portrait photo of Angela Carter

Also by Angela Carter

The Angela Carter BBC Radio Drama Collection
The Bloody Chamber, Wise Children, Fireworks
Fireworks
The Curious Room
Shaking A Leg
The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
Heroes and Villains
See all

Praise for Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus is a glorious enchantment. But an enchantment which is rooted in an earthy, rich and powerful language...It is a spell-binding achievement

Literary Review

A glorious piece of work, a set-piece studded with set-pieces. The narrative has a splendid ripe momentum, and each descriptive touch contributes a pang of vividness. By doing possible things impossibly well, the book achieves a major enchantment

Times Literary Supplement

A mistress-piece of sustained and weirdly wonderful Gothic that's both intensely amusing and also provocatively serious. This is a big, superlatively imagined novel

Observer

A remarkable book by any standards

Guardian