Emma Donoghue vividly brings to life stories inspired by her discoveries of fascinating, hidden scraps of the past. Here an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits, a plague ballad, surgical case notes, theological pamphlets, and an articulated skeleton are ingeniously fleshed out into rollicking, full-bodied fictions.

Whether she's spinning the tale of an English soldier tricked into marrying a dowdy spinster, a Victorian surgeon's attempts to "improve" women, a seventeenth-century Irish countess who ran away to Italy disguised as a man, or an "undead" murderess returning for the maid she left behind to be executed in her place, Emma Donoghue brings to her tales a colorful, elegant prose filled with the sights and smells and sounds of the period. She summons the ghosts of those men and women who counted for nothing in their own day and brings them to unforgettable life in fiction.

"[A] series of stories infused by a lively imagination....If they sometimes seem to drive her point home with unrelieved intensity, her eloquent stories elicit indignation and sorrow." Publishers Weekly

"[R]azor-sharp vignettes....Donoghue's colorful, confrontational historically based fiction is making something entirely new and captivating out of gender issues....Donoghue has staked a claim to her own distinctive fictional territory." Kirkus Reviews

"Each portrait is so strikingly original and so utterly convincing that readers will be hard pressed to believe the story could have happened any other way. Enthusiastically recommended." Library Journal

"An inspired dance on the narrow and exhilarating cliff-edge of art." The Washington Post Book World

"Sprightly prose. Transcends the usual limitations of historical fiction." The New York Times Book Review

"Earthy, exhilarating tales." Elle

"Donoghue has appropriated surgical case notes, an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits, old theological pamphlets, and more known 'facts' to use as the cores of the 17 stories in this book: fictions that are true, though not, perhaps, in their most sensational particulars." Whitney Scott, Booklist

Donoghue vividly brings to life stories inspired by her discoveries of fascinating, hidden scraps of the past. She brings to her tales a colorful, elegant prose filled with the sights and smells and sounds of the period. She summons the ghosts of those men and women who counted for nothing in their own day and brings them to unforgettable life in fiction.

Over the last ten years, Emma Donoghue has written stories about peculiar incidents in British and Irish history, combining the historian's question, 'What really happened?', with the novelist's, 'What if?' In The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, the famous (kings, writers, poisoners) rub shoulders with those were written off as 'children, cripples, half-breeds, freaks and nobodies'. Donoghue resurrects buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, giving voice to those who were never asked for their side of the story.

'The Last Rabbit' tells the story of Mary Toft, who in 1720s Surrey managed to hoax all of England by claiming to be 'the woman who gave birth to rabbits'.

In 'Acts of Union', set in Mayo in the early 1800s, an army officer is tricked into a fraudulent marriage.

'The Fox on the Line', set in London in the 1870s, is about the moment when two women almost managed to get vivisection banned.

'Account' is about a king's mistress who died mysteriously in 1490s Scotland.

'Revelations', narrated by a maverick Presbyterian minister, is the story of a Scottish cult's attempt to fast for forty days in Dumfriesshire in 1786.

'b', set in Donegal in 1824, is about a blind girl who fought for the right to educate herself.

Inspired by an old folksong, 'Ballad' is about war and plague in Methven, Scotland in 1645.

'Come, Gentle Night' is a painful comedy about the wedding night of John Ruskin and Effie Gray in Scotland in 1848.

'Salvage' is set on the storm-swept Norfolk Coast in 1823, when a crippled lady scholar of Anglo-Saxon intervened to save drowning sailors.

'Cured' is based on the case notes of the controversial surgeon Isaac Baker Brown in 1860s London.

Set in Genoa in 1632, 'Figures of Speech' is about an Irish countess, facing childbirth, who looks back at her turbulent past.

'Words for Things' is set in Cork in 1786: a teenage girl forms a complex bond with her governess, one Miss Mary Wollstonecraft.

'How a Lady Dies' is about a consumptive gentlewoman with a death-wish in 1759 Bath.

'A Short Story' is about the brief life of the world's shortest girl — a popular freak-show attraction until her death in London in 1823.

In 'Dido', set in Hampstead in the 1770s, a mixed-race girl, raised by her great-uncle Lord Mansfield, discovers what life is like outside the garden wall.

'The Necessity of Burning' is about a female brewer who gets caught up in the Peasants Revolt in Cambridge in the 1380s.

Finally, 'Looking for Petronilla' is a story about a contemporary woman who goes to Kilkenny in search of traces of Petronilla de Meath, the fourteenth-century maid of Ireland's most famous witch.

Emma Donoghue, born in 1969, is an Irish novelist, playwright, and historian who lives in Canada. Her novel Slammerkin was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

The Last Rabbit

Acts of Union

The Fox on the Line

Account

Revelations

Night Vision

Ballad

Come, Gentle Night

Salvage

Cured

Figures of Speech

Words for Things

How a Lady Dies

A Short Story

Dido

The Necessity of Burning

Looking for Petronilla