Bluebeard

by Angela Carter

  ‘After these disasters,’ he announced, ‘we must be more prudent. I think I shall use my last remaining wish to make myself a king.’

  But, all the same, he had to take the queen’s feelings into account; how would she like to be a queen and sit on a throne when she had a nose as long as a donkey’s? And, because only one wish was left, that was the choice before them – either King Blaise had for his consort the ugliest queen in the world; or they used the wish to get rid of the pudding and Blaise the woodcutter had his pretty wife again.

  Fanchon, however, thought there was no choice at all. She wanted her nose in its original condition. Nothing more.

  So the woodcutter stayed in his cottage and went out to saw logs every day. He did not become a king; he did not even fill his pockets with money. He was only too glad to use the last wish to make things as they had been again.

  Moral

  Greedy, short-sighted, careless, thoughtless, changeable people don’t know how to make sensible decisions; and few of us are capable of using well the gifts God gave us, anyway.

  Mini Modern Classics

  RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen

  KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion

  DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby

  SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled

  SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth

  JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate

  PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey

  ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace

  ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman

  TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays

  ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard

  RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain

  EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose

  G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois

  JOSEPH CONRAD Youth

  ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

  ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast

  MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War

  HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism

  F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited

  IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights

  E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops

  SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth

  HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle

  M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book

  JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants

  FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony

  RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’

  D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums

  PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint

  H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space

  MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss

  CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind

  ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper

  VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita

  R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer

  FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland

  DOROTHY PARKER The Sexes

  LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall

  JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi

  SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped

  ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon

  WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-2 Wife

  JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia

  H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall

  EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake

  P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings

  VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass

  STEFAN ZWEIG Chess

  a little history

  Penguin Modern Classics were launched in 1961, and have been shaping the reading habits of generations ever since.

  The list began with distinctive grey spines and evocative pictorial covers – a look that, after various incarnations, continues to influence their current design – and with books that are still considered landmark classics today.

  Penguin Modern Classics have caused scandal and political change, inspired great films and broken down barriers, whether social, sexual or the boundaries of language itself. They remain the most provocative, groundbreaking, exciting and revolutionary works of the last 100 years (or so).

  On the fiftieth anniversary of the Modern Classics, we’re publishing fifty Mini Modern Classics: the very best short fiction by writers ranging from Beckett to Conrad, Nabokov to Saki, Updike to Wodehouse. Though they don’t take long to read, they’ll stay with you long after you turn the final page.