Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil. Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire is a bewitching novel rooted in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Darkshire transplants this story into a richly imagined medieval world. Drawing on Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and the Brothers Grimm as much as Boccaccio, and written in beautiful prose steeped in archaic English folklore, this is a novel about what lives beneath grief, and beneath the person we think we are. Someone beautiful has always been there.
Hardcover first edition, first printing. Good condition. The beige boards show marks to the top edges. The dust jacket is unclipped and crisp, with a light tear to the spine and some staining to the rear panel. Pages are bright and unmarked. A sound copy of a first printing, with the jacket complete and unclipped. A first edition from W. W. Norton & Company, the independent, employee-owned New York house founded in 1923. In his acknowledgments, Darkshire credits editor Tom Mayer and the Norton team with patiently guiding the manuscript through extensive editing. Norton also commissioned interior illustrations by Sophie Grunnet and a half-title illustration by Daniel Pyrah, with book design by Brooke Koven. The author is an antiquarian bookseller at Henry Sotheran Ltd and wrote Once Upon a Tome. Named a Best Book of 2025 by Reactor and Library Journal. Isabella Nagg, a heroine reimagined from Boccaccio’s Decameron, lives on a small farm until her husband brings home a stolen spell book. Talking plants, sentient animals and a goblin-fruit scheme follow.
