Angela Carter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 03/08/2014 22:31

Angela Carter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Angela Carter (7 May 1940 16 February 1992) was an

English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, Angela Carter
magical realism, and picaresque works. In 2008, The
Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest
British writers since 1945".[1] In 2012, Nights at the
Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James
Tait Black Memorial Prize.[2]

Born Angela Olive Stalker

Contents 7 May 1940
Eastbourne, England
1 Biography
Died 16 February 1992 (aged 51)
2 Works
London, England
2.1 Novels
Occupation Novelist
2.2 Short fiction
Nationality British
2.3 Poetry collections
2.4 Dramatic works
2.5 Children's books
2.6 Non-fiction
2.7 As editor
2.8 As translator
2.9 Film adaptations
2.10 Radio plays
2.11 Television
3 Works on Angela Carter
4 References
5 External links

Biography
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with
her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled against anorexia. After attending Streatham & Clapham
High School, in south London, she began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the
footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.[3]

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She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter, divorcing in 1972.[4] In 1969, she used the proceeds of her
Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, where she claims in
Nothing Sacred (1982) that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised." She wrote about
her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane
Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of
Doctor Hoffman (1972). She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe, helped by her fluency in
French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities,
including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of
East Anglia. In 1977, Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son.[4] In 1979, both The Bloody
Chamber, and her influential essay, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, appeared. In the
essay, according to the writer Marina Warner, Carter "deconstructs the arguments that underly The Bloody
Chamber. It's about desire and its destruction, the self-immolation of women, how women collude and
connive with their condition of enslavement. She was much more independent-minded than the traditional
feminist of her time."[5]

As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The
Independent and New Statesman, collected in Shaking a Leg. She adapted a number of her short stories for
radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have
been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). She was
actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings,
The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, an
unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's
Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television
documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003).
Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature.

At the time of her death, Carter had started work on a sequel to Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre based on the
later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adle Varens; only a synopsis survives.[6]

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer.[7]

Works

Novels

Shadow Dance (1966) aka Honeybuzzard

The Magic Toyshop (1967)
Several Perceptions (1968)
Heroes and Villains (1969)
Love (1971)
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) aka The War of Dreams
The Passion of New Eve (1977)
Nights at the Circus (1984)
Wise Children (1991)

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Short fiction

Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974) also published as Fireworks: Nine Stories in Various Disguises and
Fireworks
The Bloody Chamber (1979)
The Bridegroom (1983) (Uncollected short story)
Black Venus (1985) published as Saints and Strangers (US)
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993)
Burning Your Boats (1995)

Poetry collections

Five Quiet Shouters (1966)

Unicorn (1966)

Dramatic works

Come Unto These Yellow Sands: Four Radio Plays (1985)

The Curious Room: Plays, Film Scripts and an Opera (1996) (includes Carter's screenplays for adaptations of The
Company of Wolves and The Magic Toyshop; also includes the contents of Come Unto These Golden Sands: Four
Radio Plays)
The Holy Family Album (1991)

Children's books

The Donkey Prince (1970) illustrated by Eros Keith

Miss Z, the Dark Young Lady (1970) illustrated by Eros Keith
Comic and Curious Cats (1979) illustrated by Martin Leman
Moonshadow (1982) illustrated by Justin Todd
Sea-Cat and Dragon King (2000) illustrated by Eva Tatcheva

Non-fiction

The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1979)

Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (1982)
Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992)
Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writing (1997)

She wrote two entries in "A Hundred Things Japanese" copyright 1975 by the Japan Culture Institute. ISBN 0-87040-364-8
It says "She has lived in Japan both from 1969 to 1971 and also during 1974" (p 202).

As editor

Wayward Girls and Wicked Women: An Anthology of Subversive Stories (1986)

The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990) aka The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book

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The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1992) aka Strange Things Still Sometimes Happen: Fairy Tales From
Around the World (1993)
Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales (2005) (collects the two Virago Books above)

As translator

The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977)

Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982) illustrated by Michael Foreman (Perrault stories with two
by Leprince de Beaumont)

Film adaptations

The Company of Wolves (1984) adapted by Carter with Neil Jordan from her short story of the same name, "Wolf-
Alice" and "The Werewolf"
The Magic Toyshop (1987) adapted by Carter from her novel of the same name

Radio plays

Vampirella (1976) written by Carter and directed by Glyn Dearman for BBC. Formed the basis for the short story
"The Lady of the House of Love".
Come Unto These Yellow Sands (1979)
The Company of Wolves (1980) adapted by Carter from her short story of the same name, and directed by Glyn
Dearman for BBC
Puss-in-Boots (1982) adapted by Carter from her short story and directed by Glyn Dearman for BBC
A Self-Made Man (1984)

Television

The Holy Family Album (1991)

Omnibus: Angela Carter's Curious Room (1992)

Works on Angela Carter

Milne, Andrew (2006), The Bloody Chamber d'Angela Carter, Paris: Editions Le Manuscrit,
Universit (http://www.manuscrit.com/catalogue/textes/fiche_texte.asp?idOuvrage=6256)
Milne, Andrew (2007), Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber: A Reader's Guide, Paris:
Editions Le Manuscrit Universit (http://www.manuscrit.com/catalogue/textes/fiche_texte.asp)
Dimovitz, Scott A., 'I Was the Subject of the Sentence Written on the Mirror: Angela Carter's
Short Fiction and the Unwriting of the Psychoanalytic Subject.' Lit: Literature Interpretation
Theory 21.1 (2010): 1-19. (http://www.regis.edu/content/fac/pdf/Scott_Dimovitz_Carter3.pdf)
Dimovitz, Scott A., 'Angela Carters Narrative Chiasmus: The Infernal Desire Machines of
Doctor Hoffman and The Passion of New Eve.' Genre XVII (2009): 83-111.

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(http://www.regis.edu/content/fac/pdf/Scott_Dimovitz_Carter2.pdf)
Pireddu, Nicoletta. "CaRterbury Tales: Romances of Disenchantment in Geoffrey Chaucer and
Angela Carter," _The Comparatist_ 21, 1997: 117-48.
Dimovitz, Scott A., 'Cartesian Nuts: Rewriting the Platonic Androgyne in Angela Carters
Japanese Surrealism'. FEMSPEC: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Journal, 6:2 (December 2005):
1531. (http://www.regis.edu/content/fac/pdf/Scott_Dimovitz_Carter1.pdf)
Krchy, Anna (2008), Body-Texts in the Novels of Angela Carter. Writing from a
Corporeagraphic Perspective. Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press
(http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=7575&pc=9)
Topping, Angela (2009), Focus on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories London: The
Greenwich Exchange (http://www.greenex.co.uk/)
Enright, Anne (17 February 2011). "Diary" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n04/anne-enright/diary).
London Review of Books 33 (4): 3839. Retrieved 11 February 2011.

References
1. ^ The 50 greatest British writers since 1945
(http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece). 5 January 2008. The
Times. Retrieved on 2010-03-05.
2. ^ Alison Flood (6 December 2012). "Angela Carter named best ever winner of James Tait Black award"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/06/angela-carter-uk-oldest-literary-prize). The Guardian. Retrieved 6
December 2012.
3. ^ "Angela Carter - Biography" (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/10/angelacarter). The Guardian. 22
July 2008. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
4. ^ a b "Angela Carter - Biography" (http://www.egs.edu/library/angela-carter/biography/). European Graduate School.
Retrieved 24 June 2014.
5. ^ Marina Warner, speaking on Radio Three's the Verb, February 2012
6. ^ Clapp, Susannah (29 January 2006). "The greatest swinger in town"
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/jan/29/theatre.angelacarter?gusrc=rss&feed=books). The Guardian (London).
Retrieved 25 April 2010.
7. ^ Sarah Waters (3 October 2009). "My hero: Angela Carter" (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/03/sarah-
waters-angela-carter). The Guardian. Retrieved 24 June 2014.

External links
BBC interview (Video, 25 June 1991, 25 mins) Wikiquote has a collection
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12245.shtml) of quotations related to:
Angela Carter
Angela Carter (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/acarter.htm)

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biography and selected bibliography

Angela Carter (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Angela_Carter) at the Internet Speculative Fiction
Database
"Angela Carter remembered" Daily Telegraph 3 May 2010
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7656621/Angela-Carter-remembered.html)
A Conversation with Angela Carter by Anna Katsavos (http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?
fa=customcontent&GCOI=15647100621780&extrasfile=A09F7835%2DB0D0%2DB086%2DB6050
CC6F168CDAE%2Ehtml)
Angela Carter in conversation about her life and work, 1988, British Library
(http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-C0095X0397XX-0100V0.xml)
Essay on (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n19/angela-carter/colette) Colette Vol. 2 No. 19 2 October 1980
London Review of Books by Angela Carter.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Angela_Carter&oldid=614211165"

Categories: 1940 births 1992 deaths 20th-century British novelists 20th-century women writers
Academics of the University of East Anglia Academics of the University of Sheffield
Alumni of the University of Bristol Cancer deaths in England Deaths from lung cancer
English feminists English women novelists English short story writers English socialists
English translators English women writers Feminist writers
James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winners Magic realism writers
People from Eastbourne Socialist feminists Women short story writers

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