Poets also frequently appear as characters in his novels, always on the side of good: Sappho in Wolfwinter (1972); Robert Herrick in Will-o-the-Wisp (1977, serialized 1974); a fictionalized Charles Sorley in The Goat Without Horns (1971); and Thomas Chatterton in The Not-World (1975).
In Swann's story the statue's head is discovered and found to have been modeled upon an alien visitor whom the sculptor took for a goddess.
The early story "The Dryad-tree" is set in contemporary Florida and features a woman's reaction to the knowledge that her new husband's garden contains a tree possessed by a jealous dryad.
[1] The bulk of Swann's fantasy fits into a rough chronology that begins in ancient Egypt around 2500 BC and chronicles the steady decline of magic and mythological races such as dryads, centaurs, satyrs, selkies and minotaurs.
However, Swann was reportedly unhappy with George Barr's cover artwork, which showed two of the characters being chased by a cyclops, because he felt it misrepresented the style of the novel.