The Charwoman's Shadow

The Charwoman's Shadow (1926) is Lord Dunsany's enchanting novel set in the waning days of Spain's Golden Age. Ramon Alonzo, the young son of the Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest, is sent to apprentice with a reclusive magician in the mountains beyond the village of Aragona. His mission is to learn the art of making gold so he can fill his sister Mirandola's dowry casket and secure her a suitable marriage. But when Ramon Alonzo arrives at the shadowy house in the wood, he discovers that the magician's power comes at a terrible price: he steals the shadows of those who serve him.

The novel's central mystery unfolds through the charwoman who scrubs the magician's floors—an old woman who was once a beautiful girl, lured from Aragona decades ago and stripped of her shadow along with her youth and beauty. When the magician takes Ramon Alonzo's shadow as well, the young man must find a way to recover both his own and the charwoman's stolen shadows, outwit a sorcerer who has trafficked with time itself, and win the hand of Anemone, the mysterious maiden he frees from the magician's household.

Written in Dunsany's signature ornate prose, the novel blends fairy-tale wonder with sly humor and genuine pathos. The final chapters, in which the magician departs Spain forever with all the creatures of fable and enchantment trailing behind him, stand among the most beautiful passages in fantasy literature—a farewell to the Golden Age itself and the magic that once inhabited the world.