"A Lion among men" - the complete works of Gregory Maguire
A #ReadingList for one of my top 3 all-time favorite authors.
“I thought: How like some ancient story this all sounds. Have these children overheard their grandparents revisiting some dusty gossip about me and my kin, and are the little ones turning it into a household tale of magic? Full of fanciful touches: glass slippers, a fairy godmother? Or are the children dressing themselves in some older gospel, which my family saga resembles only by accident?
In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings. When we grow up, we learn that it’s far more common for human beings to turn into rats.”
A few weeks ago I finished reading Maguire’s most famous book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (you may know it from the musical—& now a film—adaptation of the same name) for the first time. The first book of his that I read was his dark Christmas fairy tale, Hiddensee—a loose retelling of Drosselmeyer’s storyline from The Nutcracker, in 2019, after which I read two more of his winter tales over each of the next respective holiday seasons. These three books—Hiddensee, A Wild Winter Swan, & Lost—are (devastatingly, imo) his more widely-misunderstood/-underappreciated novels, though all favorites of mine, & were in my opinion an excellent place for me to start because I got to see a glimpse of the real Gregory Maguire in all his dark literary genius straight off the bat.
From there I read After Alice, Mirror Mirror, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, & one of his children’s novellas, The Dream Stealer, before finally picking up Wicked. All of which were instant “new” favorite, five-star reads, but to force me to choose an overall favorite from among those titles would be impossible because, much like the works of my number one favorite author, Helen Oyeyemi, all of Maguire’s works too are but different Leaves of a magnificent whole Tree, & my appreciation for all of them only increases the more of his books that I read.
That is why I am very excited that I still have one of his winter stories (The Next Queen of Heaven) to read this Christmas—following which I will begin my first rereads of the winter tales beginning next Yuletide—along with the rest of his Wicked Years tetralogy & the sequel Another Day trilogy, as well as his prequel novel, Elphie, which comes out next March (2025) but for which I already have an eARC because the NetGalley gods love me in spite of my dismal review %. 😁 & I haven’t even mentioned his oeuvre of children’s books either!
Listed below are all of the titles I’ve read along with the ones I am most looking forward to reading (titles marked with an ➰ are ones that I have on my shelves). I feel like every time I research his books I find more new ones that I hadn’t heard of before—some of which are out of print like The Dream Stealer—so I can’t quite claim with full confidence that this list will have everything. If you know of titles that are missing please let me know in the comments!
I hope you find something you like!
Xx ceallaigh
“I mention this to show you how a thief like me works, which, when dealing with something as combustible as someone else’s famous material, can be summed up like this: very very cautiously indeed. To play with the material of L. Frank Baum, which in many ways was full of useful inconsistencies and moral conundrums, was relatively child’s play. Backyard theatrics. Likewise, in tussling with Grimm and Perrault in Mirror Mirror and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, respectively, I could insinuate my own narrative energies into the hollows that characterize these ancient tales, hollows both accommodating and even provocative, existing because bits of original narrative have worn away or lost their meaning.”
— from the Afterword to the 25th Anniversary Edition of Wicked by Gregory Maguire
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Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.
The Oz Books:
The Wicked Years—
➰ Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
➰ Son of a Witch (2005)
➰ A Lion Among Men (2008)
➰ Out of Oz (2011)
Tales Told in Oz (2012) —a collection of folklore & stories from the world of Oz, illustrated by Maguire’s husband, artist Andy Newman, & published & printed exclusively for a charity event they hosted in 2012 so it’s pretty much unavailable anywhere… another white whale of mine… 😭
Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I (out March 2025) —I believe this is based off of the 2024 movie but I’m not 100% sure…
Another Day—
➰ The Brides of Maracoor (2021)
The Oracle of Maracoor (2022)
The Witch of Maracoor (2023)
Prequel—
➰Elphie: A Wicked Childhood (out March 2025)
“You might forget a story, but you can never unhear a story. By that token, you might forget an event, but you can never go back to living as you did before its hidden influence was applied upon you.”
— from Hiddensee
Other Novels for Adults:
Fairy Tale Retellings:
➰ Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
➰ Mirror Mirror (2003) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
➰ After Alice (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Winter Stories:
➰ The Next Queen of Heaven (2010) —the hardcover 1st edition copy of this book is one of the white whales of my library collection… 🤤
➰ Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
➰ A Wild Winter Swan (2020) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“After lunch, Laura hunched in the cold library with her grandfather’s sweater folded under her chair. She was supposed to be doing a biology project on anatomy. The subject was bones, which was mostly copying drawings from the acetate overlays in the World Book Encyclopedia. Laura had asked if she could do a drawing of a bird wing rather than a human arm, and label all the parts. It would still be a reticulated diagram. Miss Frobisher had held out for the human arm as being more pertinent to the subject of Human Anatomy, Fall Semester. Laura had thought that was small-minded of her because we all came from birds way back. Back when we could fly.”
— from A Wild Winter Swan
Works for Children:
The Lightning Time (1978)
The Daughter of the Moon (1980)
Lights on the Lake (1981)
➰ The Dream Stealer (1983) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Peace and Quiet Diner (1988)
I Feel like the Morning Star (1989)
Lucas Fishbone (1990)
Missing Sisters (1994)
Oasis (1996)
The Good Liar (1997)
Crabby Cratchitt (2000)
➰ Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales (2004 / reprint out May 2025)
The Hamlet Chronicles:
➰ Seven Spiders Spinning (1994)
Six Haunted Hairdos (1997)
Five Alien Elves (1998)
Four Stupid Cupids (2000)
➰ Three Rotten Eggs (2002)
A Couple of April Fools (2004)
One Final Firecracker (2005)
➰ What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy (2007)
➰ Egg and Spoon (2014)
➰ Cress Watercress (2022)
“A spider goes back and forth, a thread, a thread, spinning a circular ladder that falls in on itself like a dream. A dream goes back and forth, a face, a gesture, and most of it is empty, unfilled air like the spaces of a web. Precious little information you get from either. But at the heart of each is the answer.”
— from The Dream Stealer
Short Stories:
“Scarecrow” (2001), published in Half-Human edited by Bruce Coville —The “Note” beside this title in the Wikipedia entry for Maguire’s bibliography says: “This is the life story of the Scarecrow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but is not a part of The Wicked Years.” I’m not sure why it’s not considered Wicked canon though; if I ever read it I’ll report back!
“Fee, Fie, Foe et Cetera” (2002), published in The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
“The Oakthing” (2004), published in The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
“Chatterbox”, published in I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes With Religion
“The Honorary Shepherds” (1994), published in Am I Blue?: Coming Out From The Silence
“Beyond the Fringe” (1998) published in A Glory of Unicorns
“The Seven Stage a Comeback” (2000) published in A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales
➰ Matchless: A Christmas Story (2008) —“Every year, NPR asks a writer to compose an original story with a Christmas theme” & this is the story Gregory Maguire wrote & read aloud for their program in 2008. You can read & listen to the recording for it here.
“The Silk Road Runs Through Tupperneck, N.H.” (2009), published in How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity
“Missing in Venice” (2011), published in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick
“In That Country” (2012), published in Parnassus
“I looked upon myself the way I did when I was an adolescent. When life beckoned from the horizon. I could only imagine growing more beautiful, more powerful, more responsive to life's beneficence and squalor. Back then, the figure who would look back at me in the looking glass was potent with mystery, more arresting than I could imagine actually seeming to anyone… —but what do we ever want but for someone to come nearer? And then all our imperfections are magnified.”
— from Mirror Mirror
Other Writings:
➰ Foreword to My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer.
Foreword to the Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Foreword to this edition of The Book of Merlyn: The Conclusion to the Once and Future King by TH White
Foreword to the 40th Anniversary Edition of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
His Afterword to the 25th Anniversary Edition of Wicked is worth a separate mention as it talks about the impact of fairy tales & their subversive retellings of them & reads more like an incredibly interesting & eloquent 30-some page essay.
Innocence and Experience: Essays and Conversations on Children's Literature (ed., with Barbara Harrison) (1987)
Origins of Story: On Writing for Children (ed., with Barbara Harrison) (1999)
Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation (2009)
Adjacent Readings. . .
. . . in conversation with Maguire’s works:
“There’s No Place Like Home,” by Jennifer C. Schunemann
➰ “A Retelling” by Daisy Johnson, in Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold edited by Carolyne Larrington (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Fairy Tales and The Art of Subversion, by Jack Zipes (1983) —especially the chapter “Inverting and Subverting the World with Hope: The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde and L. Frank Baum” p. 97-133
Fairy Tale as Myth / Myth as Fairy Tale, by Jack Zipes (1994) —especially the chapter “Oz as American Myth” p. 119-38
“Fairy Tales On the Stage” by L Frank Baum (1905 article for the Chicago Record Herald)—really wish I knew how to find a copy of this but I can’t find any information about where it might be anywhere but it’s apparently a discussion re: the adaptation of Fairy Tales to the stage &/or for an adult audience…
“Modern Fairy Tales” article for The Advance Herald, by L Frank Baum (1909)
➰ The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L Frank Baum (1902) ★ ★ ★ ★
➰ “On Fairy Stories” (1947) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ & “Leaf by Niggle” (1925) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ in Tales from the Perilous Realm by JRR Tolkien
Adaptations:
Wicked (2003 Broadway musical)
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (2002) —I actually haven’t watched this one yet because I loved the book so much that I’m really worried they didn’t adapt it “properly”. Maguire was a writer on this movie though so I’ll probably risk it. . . one day. . . 🫣
Wicked: Part One (2024 film adaptation of Act I of the Broadway musical)
“In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever after of a Witch, there is no happily; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is—alas, or perhaps thank mercy—no telling. She was dead, dead and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
‘And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time.’
‘And did she ever come out?’
‘Not yet.’”
— from Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West