Angela Carter

Author profile

born

in The United Kingdom

May 07, 1940

died

February 16, 1992

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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From Wikipedia: 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 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.

She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, 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...more From Wikipedia: 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 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.

She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, 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 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 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.

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 Wolf'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).

At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives.

Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature.

Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer. Her obituary published in The Observer said, "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 reveled in the diverse."
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Average rating: 3.99 · 27,561 ratings · 2,059 reviews · 80 distinct works · Similar authors

	The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories 4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 avg rating — 9,218 ratings — published 1979 — 27 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nights at the Circus 3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 3,194 ratings — published 1984 — 24 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Magic Toyshop 3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 2,613 ratings — published 1967 — 19 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wise Children 3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 2,424 ratings — published 1991 — 20 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie (contributor) 4.32 of 5 stars 4.32 avg rating — 1,182 ratings — published 1995 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Passion of New Eve 3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 avg rating — 1,137 ratings — published 1977 — 9 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales by Angela Carter (Editor), Corinna Sargood (Illustrator) 4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 avg rating — 937 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman 3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 986 ratings — published 1972 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Heroes and Villains 3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 avg rating — 617 ratings — published 1969 — 15 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Saints and Strangers 4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 avg rating — 616 ratings — published 1980 — 12 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Angela Carter…

Quotes by Angela Carter

“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
― Angela Carter

272 people liked it

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
― Angela Carter

tags: reading

249 people liked it

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.

from "The Lady of the Haunted House”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

91 people liked it

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Choose a Fiction book for us to read in July 2013

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

4 votes, 28.6%

Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

3 votes, 21.4%

Wise Children by Angela Carter

3 votes, 21.4%

The Lost Estate by Alain-Fournier

3 votes, 21.4%

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

1 vote, 7.1%

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

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Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley

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Angela Carter

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Angela Carter's Books