Book:I Shall Wear Midnight

I Shall Wear Midnight
Cover art by Paul Kidby
Co-author(s)	no
Illustrator(s)	Paul Kidby
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	Sep 2, 2010
ISBN	0385611072
Pages
RRP	£18.99
Main characters	Tiffany Aching, the Pictsies
Series	Tiffany Series
Annotations	View
Notes	The fourth Tiffany Aching book
All data relates to the first UK edition.

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth Tiffany Aching novel, published September 2, 2010.

The title is loosely based upon the poem “When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple” by Jenny Joseph. This is the title that most people would recognise, however it is interesting that the correct title for her poem is “Warning”.¹ Despite a superficial similarity, there is no evidence to link the two works.

The title is also a capsule of the thought process of the character Tiffany in regards to her wearing colourful clothing despite being a witch. It is also a callback to the end of A Hat Full of Sky, regarding the cloak that the hiver bought while possessing her. It is also echoed in the track “We Shall Wear Midnight” on the Tiffany Aching-inspired Steeleye Span album Wintersmith, which was released in 2013.

While previously Tiffany aged two years between books (she’s 9 in The Wee Free Men, 11 in A Hat Full of Sky and turns 13 during Wintersmith), in this book she is “nearly sixteen”, a jump of three years. (On the other hand, some time passes in Wintersmith, so it’s possible she was older by its end; this might explain why some characters in this book say she kissed the Winter about two years earlier.)

According to interviews given while it was being written, I Shall Wear Midnight was originally intended by Pratchett to be the final Tiffany Aching book.

¹You can see it here.

Blurb

A man with no eyes. No eyes at all. Two tunnels in his head... It's not easy being a witch, and it's certainly not all whizzing about on broomsticks, but Tiffany Aching - teen witch - is doing her best. Until something evil wakes up, something that stirs up all the old stories about nasty old witches, so that just wearing a pointy hat suddenly seems a very bad idea. Worse still, this evil ghost from the past is hunting down one witch in particular. He's hunting for Tiffany. And he's found her...

A fabulous Discworld title filled with witches and magic and told in the inimitable Terry Pratchett style, I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth Discworld title to feature Tiffany and her tiny, fightin', boozin’ pictsie friends, the Nac Mac Feegle (aka The Wee Free Men).