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.

As with previous books, Tiffany has aged two years since Wintersmith, and is now "nearly sixteen".

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).