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Angela Carter

Angela Carter (May 8, 1940[1] “ February 16, 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her post-feminist magical realist and science fiction works.

Contents

[edit] 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 anorexia. She at first worked as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser following in the footsteps of her father who was also a journalist. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.

Carter™s writings show the influence of her mother. This influence can be seen in her novel Wise Children that is notable for its many Shakespearean references. Carter was also interested in reappropriating writings by male authors such as the Marquis de Sade (see her feminist polemic The Sadeian Woman) and Charles Baudelaire (see her short story 'Black Venus'), amongst other literary forefathers. But she was also fascinated by the matriarchal oral story telling tradition, rewriting several fairy tales for her short story collection The Bloody Chamber, including Little Red Riding Hood.

She married twice, the first time in 1960 to a man named Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and travel to Japan, living in Tokyo for two years, where she claims, she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised" (Nothing Sacred (1982)). She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desires Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972). She was there at the same time as Roland Barthes who published his experiences in Empire of Signs (1970).

She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe helped by her fluency in two European languages, 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 again to her second husband Mark Pearce.

As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter also contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in Shaking a Leg. She also wrote for radio, adapting a number of her short stories for the medium, and 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 the adaptation of both films, the screenplays for which are collected in The Curious Room, together with her radioplay scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Woolf's Orlando and an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. These neglected works are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book Anagrams of Desire (2003).

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 after developing cancer. Below is an extract from her obituary published in the Observer:

She was the opposite of parochial. Nothing, for her, was outside the pale: she wanted to know about everything and everyone, and every place and every word. She relished life and language hugely, and revelled in the diversity.

[edit] Works as author

[edit] 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)

[edit] Short fiction

Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1970)
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)
Black Venus (also known as Saints and Strangers) (1985)
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993)
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (1995)

[edit] Dramatic works

Come Unto These Golden 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)

[edit] Children's books

The Donkey Prince (1970)
Miss Z, the Dark Young Lady (1970)
Comic and Curious Cats (1979)
The Music People (1980)
Moonshadow (1982)
Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982)
Sea-Cat and Dragon King (2000)

[edit] Non-fiction

The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1978)
Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (1982)
Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992)
Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writing (1997)

[edit] Works as editor

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carter"
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