Gratiana Chanter’s novella The Witch of Withyford: A Story of Exmoor, containing her own illustrations, was first published by J. M. Dent & Co. in May 1896. In it, Nance Darvel, a gruesome woman who lives in a hovel, is intent on punishing a slight by destroying the life of the local squire. It is an uncanny tale of witchcraft, superstition, child-theft and revenge, set in Gratiana’s beloved Devonshire and told by an elderly servant of Withyford Grange. This current edition includes three other tales: ‘The Appledore Boy’, ‘The Shadowy Hillside’, and ‘The Forty Thieves of Exmoor’. It also includes all of the author’s illustrations for the first edition and a detailed biographical essay by Gina R. Collia, ‘Gratiana Chanter: A Typical Daughter of Devon’.
 
‘Written in clear, delicate style and with only sufficient dialect to add piquancy to the narrative of the old servant of the Grange. The story breathes of the sweet Devon air, and is full of quaint folklore, and old world loyalty and simplicity, and the beauties of Tor and Combe are vividly described.’ Pall Mall Gazette, 9 May 1896.