This is an odd little 1922 novella in which the central character’s wife is mysteriously transformed into a fox. They initially continue almost as if nothing has happened, the vixen wearing clothes and sitting at the table to eat.

Over time, her vulpine nature overtakes her human tendencies. The couple drift apart as she moves into a den, though maintain a close affection.

I enjoyed this mostly as a brief curiosity.

A couple of quotations:

Wonderful or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are irregular in their incidence. Thus there may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity.

This story was made up by his neighbours not because they were fanciful or wanted to deceive, but like most tittle-tattle to fill a gap, as few like to confess ignorance, and if people are asked about such or such a man they must have something to say, or they suffer in everybody’s opinion, are set down as dull or “out of the swim.”

My thanks to the London Library for lending me a beautiful 1922 edition of this book with the original woodcuts by Garnett’s then wife—even though the book is dedicated to Duncan Grant, with whom he’d had an affair. Life was complicated among the Bloomsbury set.

Some people speculate that the novel is about the affair with Grant; others that it’s about the relationship with his wife. Both strike me as perfectly plausible, but then so does virtually every other interpretation, including the idea that it’s just a fantasy story with no allegorical meaning whatsoever.