Phoenix Court (series)

Phoenix Court was a "queer magic realist" series of novels and short stories written by Paul Magrs.Lethe Press: The Phoenix Court series by Paul Magrs It featured the first appearance of , who was later introduced to the Doctor Who universe.
The series comprised four novels: Marked for Life, Magrs' first novel, published 1995; Does It Show?, published 1997; Could It Be Magic?, published in 1998 and adapted from the 1997 short story of the same nameCould it be Magic? Well, could it..?; and finally, Fancy Man, published two decades later in 2018. Magrs has also written several short stories featuring characters from the Phoenix Court series, including his first published work Patient Iris, as well as Judith's Do Round Hers and Could It Be Magic?, short stories in the 1997 anthology Playing Out.
While Phoenix Court predated Magrs' first piece of licensed Doctor Who prose, Old Flames, Magrs has explicitly affirmed that Iris from the Phoenix Court series is one and the same as the DWU Iris. For instance, in the afterword to The Scarlet Empress, where he wrote how he "injected" Iris into the DWU, and while she wasn't a Time Lord originally, she was still the same character. Magrs' later BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Blue Angel was an explicit sequel to the Phoenix Court series.
== Connections with the DWU ==
In Bafflement and Devotion, the ' appearance was described in such a manner reminiscent of Iris from the Phoenix Court series, implying that they were the same incarnation.
The Blue Angel was the first direct crossover with the Phoenix Court series, where it was shown that Phoenix Court, the titular council estate in Newton Aycliffe, existed in both the Doctor's universe and the Obverse. The novel went out of its way to tie the continuities of the series together, going so far as to have one of the characters pass meta-fictional commentary on fiction where he said all reality was essentially fiction and therefore equally valid.
Hospitality, a short story printed in Iris: Abroad, continued the story of from the Phoenix Court series.
An in-universe version of Marked for Life appears in the stories Dog Days of Summer and Dark Side, and in The Story of Fester Cat the in-universe Paul Magrs talks to his cat about the book.
== Prose ==
=== Novels ===
#	Title 	Release	Notes
1	Marked for Life 	1995 	Features and Nesta.
2	Does It Show? 	1997 	Features Big Sue and Nesta.
3	Could It Be Magic?	1998 	Features Big Sue and Nesta.
4	Fancy Man 	2018 	Features "Brenda Soobie".
=== Short stories ===
Title 	Release 	Notes
Patient Iris 	1995 	Features .
Judith's Do Round Hers	1997Published in Magrs' anthology Playing Out.	
Could It Be Magic? 	1997Published in Magrs' anthology Playing Out.	Later adapted into the novel of the same name.
Nude on the Moon 	1998 	
Fancy Man 	 	
Bargains for Charlotte	 	
Jep 	 	
Fond of a Treat 	 	
Glittering Fag 	 	
Baubles 	2020 	Features the Christmas Hotel from Magrs' Iris Wildthyme and Brenda and Effie series.
== Gallery ==
Marked for Life.jpg|Marked for Life
Does it Show.jpg|Does It Show?
Could it be Magic?.jpg|Could It Be Magic?
Fancy Man.jpg|Fancy Man
== Footnotes ==
Category:Real world series with DWU connections
Category:Prose fiction overviews