This novel would not exist without the help of a great many people. I would like to thank John Paul Riquelme and Julia Prewitt Brown, the first and second readers of my dissertation, for letting me write about monsters, and for their tireless patience with a graduate student who was already, at that point, transmuting into a writer. Before this was a novel, it was a short story called “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter.” I’m grateful to Karen Meisner, who purchased and edited it for Strange Horizons, and to John Joseph Adams, who reprinted it in The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination.
Once I started writing the novel version, Alexandra Duncan and Nathan Ballingrud workshopped an early draft of the first three chapters. Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Catherynne M. Valente, and C. S. E. Cooney read and commented on a later draft of those chapters; they showed me who my characters were and how I could write the rest of the novel. Haddayr Copley-Woods generously read the entire novel once it was drafted. This novel would not exist in its current form without their smart, honest, and insightful feedback, and I am so grateful for their help. During the writing process, I traveled twice to England to do the necessary research. Thank you to Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James for letting me stay in their beautiful house in London, and for suggesting so many of the resources I ended up using. And thank you as well to Terri Windling for showing me her lovely corner of Devon, so I could get a sense for the countryside Justine travels through. Finally, many thanks to Joy Marchand for a lesson on translating into Latin.
My agent, Barry Goldblatt, was involved with this project from the beginning: we started talking about it long before I wrote the first draft. I’d like to thank him for his faith in me and this novel, and for waiting so patiently until it was done. And a heartfelt thank-you to my editor, Navah Wolfe, who saw all the places my manuscript could be stronger, as well as the entire team at Saga Press who created the book you hold in your hands, including Bridget Madsen, Tatyana Rosalia, and Krista Vossen. I’m also grateful to Kate Forrester, who created a cover illustration more perfect than I could have imagined.
Finally, my thanks to Kendrick Goss, who waved away my doubts, and most of all to Ophelia Goss, who read the final draft before it was submitted and told me that she liked my girl monsters. This book is written for her. It is so much better for the help of all the people who have read and commented on it in one form or another. Its mistakes and deficiencies are, of course, my own.