Angela Carter

Angela Carter (* 7th May of 1940 in Eastbourne; † 16th February of 1992 in London) born as Angela Olive Stalker was a British writer of fiction and journalist known for her “playful retelling of fairy tales and her witty feminism” (Roberts). She wrote novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children´s books, nonfiction, and essays, but also worked as a translator and produced radio plays.

Life

Due to the air attacks of the Germans on London in 1940, Angela Carter´s mother living at London escaped to Eastbourne in Sussex where Angela Stalker was born on the 7th of May. Later Angela and her mother moved on to South Yorkshire, the home of Angela´s grandmother. When the Second World War ended, they left South Yorkshire in order to return to London. (Gamble 7) Angela Stalker got her first job as a junior reporter for the Croyden Advertiser because of the efforts of her father Hugh, who worked as a journalist. At the age of 20, Angela Stalker married Paul Carter and moved with him to Bristol. In Bristol she attended Bristol University where she gained a degree in English in 1965. (ibid.) In 1966 her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published, being followed by her second novel The Magic Toyshop in 1967 for which she received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the same year. Before entering the ranks of successful British novelists, she left Britain fleeing from her failing marriage and at the same time leaving the literary scene. The following three years Angela Carter lived in Japan not giving up on literature. In 1972 she returned to Britain and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman was published without showing the same acknowledgment as the first two of her novels. The following works also did not bestow the success hoped for on Angela Carter. In the 1980s her career as a writer was pushed by publishing The Bloody Chamber, which was paid attention to by a great readership, reviewers, as well as feminist critics. Nights at the Circus published in 1984 was the reason for Angela Carter to turn into a well-known and established writer. From then on she lived at Clapham in South London together with a new man and later a common child. In the following years she was a writer in residence at universities in America and Australia. Her famousness was boosted by the film adaptations of The Company of Wolves (1985) and The Magic Toyshop (1986). Wise Children was published in 1991 shortly before she died of lung cancer on the 16th of February of 1992. (ibid. 7 f.) After her death her popularity peaked out and more and more critics engaged in Angela Carter´s works - the beginning of ´Carter Studies´. The variety of works as well as the depth of these made Angela Carter an exceptional writer and as such a popular target for research in the fields of literary studies, gender studies, cultural theory, philosophy and media studies. (ibid. 8)

Works

Angela Carter was a very productive writer whose wide range and depth of works is a popular field of research up to today. This has also been acknowledged in numerous articles published in well-respected newspapers like The New York Times in which Salman Rushdie, a friend of Angela Carter, celebrates her with these words: “[…] many writers knew that she was that rare thing, a real one-off, nothing like her on the planet; and so did many bewitched, inspired readers” (Rushdie). Lorna Sage, the first one to write a book on Angela Carter, describes her as follows: “She belongs among the fabulists and tale-spinners, the mockers and speculators and iconoclasts and utopians” (1). Another statement paying tribute to the variety of Carter´s works is: “Magic Realism, Surrealism, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Gothic, Feminism, Postmodernism – all of these categories apply, and yet all are one-dimensional in their application to Carter; none of them, with the possible exception of Surrealism, encompass the full spectrum of her accomplishments” (VanderMeer).

Novels and Short Fiction

Shadow Dance (1966) The Magic Toyshop (1967) Several Perceptions (1968) Heroes and Villains (1969) Love (1971) The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) Fireworks: Nine Profane Stories (1974) The Passion of New Eve (1977) The Bloody Chamber (1979) The Bridegroom (1983) Nights at the Circus (1984) Black Venus (1985) Saints and Strangers: Short Stories (1986) Wayward Girls and Wicked Women: An Anthology of Subversive Stories (1986; Angela Carter as editor) The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990; Angela Carter as editor) Wise Children (1991) American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993) Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (1995) Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales (2005)

Poetry

Unicorn 1966 Five Quiet Shouters: An Anthology of Assertive Verse (Barry Tebb as editor) 1966

Dramatic Works

Come Unto These Yellow Sands: Four Radio Plays (1985) The Holy Family Album (1991; television documentary; Angela Carter as writer and narrator; JoAnn Kaplan as director) The Curious Room: Plays, Film Scripts and an Opera (1996)

Children’s Books

The Donkey Prince (1970; Eros Keith as illustrator) Miss Z, the Dark Young Lady (1970; Eros Keith as illustrator) Comic and Curious Cats (1979; Martin Leman as illustrator) Moonshadow (1982; Justin Todd as illustrator) Sea-Cat and Dragon King (2000; Eva Tatcheva as illustrator) Grafitti Gerbil (2011)

Nonfiction

A Hundred Things Japanese (1975; Angela Carter as a contributor) The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1978) Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (1982) Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992) Strange Things Still Sometimes Happen: Fairy Tales From Around the World (1993) Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writing (1997)

Translations

The Fairy Tales of Charles Perraul (1977) Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982)

Radio Plays

Vampirella (1976; directed by Glyn Dearman) Come Unto These Yellow Sands (1979) The Company of Wolves (1980; directed by Glyn Dearman) Puss-in-Boots (1982; directed by Glyn Dearman) A Self-Made Man (1984)

Sources

Gamble, Sarah, ed. The Fiction of Angela Carter. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2001.

Rushdie, Salman. “Angela Carter, 1940 - 92: A Very Good Wizard, a Very Dear Friend”. The New York Times On the Web (8 March, 1992). 14 June 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/27/specials/carter-rushdie.html>.

Roberts, Michèle. “Angela Carter: Glam rock feminist”. The Independent (25 June 2006). 14 June 12 <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/angela- carter-glam-rock-feminist-405447.html>

Sage, Lorna. Angela Carter. Ed. Isobel Armstrong and Bryan Loughrey. Writers and Their Work. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1994.

VanderMeer, Jeff. “Angela Carter”. The Modern Word. Ed. Allen B. Ruch. 14 June 2012 <http://www.themodernword.com/SCRIPTorium/carter.html#Anchor-VII-3800>

Links

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/22/angela-carter-postcards-susannah-clapp - An article on A Card from Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp