Mirror Mirror was published by ReganBooks/HarperCollins in 2003, Maguire’s third fairy-tale revision. The novel sets the Snow White story in early sixteenth-century Italy, on a farm near Montefiore owned by a minor nobleman whose daughter Bianca de Nevada — the Snow White figure — is left in the care of Lucrezia Borgia when her father is sent on a mission by Cesare Borgia.
The historical setting provides Maguire with material far darker than any fairy tale: the Borgias’ reputation for poison, murder, and sexual corruption makes them natural villains, and the political world of Renaissance Italy — treacherous, beautiful, and amoral — provides the perfect atmosphere for a story about dangerous beauty and poisoned gifts. The “mirror” of the title is both the magic mirror of the fairy tale and the mirrors that Renaissance Italians associated with vanity, self-knowledge, and the devil.
The seven dwarfs are reimagined as ancient stone creatures — beings older than humanity, connected to the earth itself — whose protection of Bianca has nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with their own mysterious purposes. Maguire’s dwarfs are uncanny rather than charming, and their scenes have an eerie quality that lifts the novel beyond mere fairy-tale retelling into something stranger and more resonant.
Collecting Mirror Mirror
First edition (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, New York, 2003): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$35
- Without jacket: $5–$10