Angela Carter

Angela Olive Stalker Carter was born in England in 1940. She is known for rewriting fantastic stories and fairy tales, and writing SF with mythic themes, in ways that transformed and challenged gender relations.

After writing numerous novels, short works, essays, and other literary works, Carter died from cancer in 1992.

Works

• Shadow Dance (1965 novel; aka Honeybuzzard)
• The Magic Toyshop (1967 novel)
• Several Perceptions (1968 novel)
• Heroes and Villains (1969 novel)
• Love (1971 novel; rev. ed. 1987)
• The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972 novel); aka The War of Dreams)
• The Passion of New Eve (1977 novel)
• Nights at the Circus (1985 novel)
• Wise Children (1991 novel)

Short fiction

• "The Donkey Prince" (1970; reprinted in Jack Zipes', Don't Bet on the Prince (1987))
• "The Loves of Lady Purple" (in Fireworks and Wayward Girls and Wicked Women)

Children's books

• 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)

Poetry

• Unicorn (1966)

Fiction collections

• Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974 collection)
• The Bloody Chamber (1979 collection)
• Black Venus (1985 collection; published in US in 1986 as Saints and Strangers)
• American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993 collection)
• Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (1995 collection)
• The Curious Room (a collection of her dramatic writings and scripts)

Edited works

• Editor, Wayward Girls and Wicked Women: An Anthology of Subversive Stories (1986)
• Editor, The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (aka The Old Wives' Book of Fairy Tales (1990))
• Editor, The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1992) aka Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen: Fairy Tales from Around the World

Translations

• "The Debutante" from La Debutante, Contes et Pieces by Leonora Carrington
• "Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales" (1991) (1991: Otter, Boston)

Scripts, etc.

• Come Unto These Yellow Sands: Four Radio Plays (1985) (Bloodaxe Books, London)
• "The Company of Wolves" (1984 film based on story) (wrote and adapted story with Neil Jordan)
• "The Magic Toyshop" (1987) (wrote story)
• Libretto for opera version of Orlando"
• Screenplay for The Christchurch Murders (about the Parker-Hulme murders)
• "The Holy Family Album" (1991 documentary written and narrated by Angela Carter, looking at images of Christ in Western art)
• Stage adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Lulu
• "The Lady of the House of Love" (radio play)
• "The Company of Wolves" (radio play)
• "Puss in Boots" (radio play)
• Numerous radio adaptations of her own short stories
• Radio drama on Richard Dadd (a Victorian painter who murdered his father)
• Radio drama on Ronald Firbank (an Edwardian novelist)

Nonfictional collections

• The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979; published in US as The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography)
• Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (1982)
• Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992)
• Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writing (1997)

Essays

• "The Language of Sisterhood", in The State of the Language (ed. Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Awards and honors

• John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (1967) for The Magic toyshop
• Somerset Maugham Award (1968) for Several Perceptions
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1985; joint winner) for Nights at the Circus
• Cheltenham Festival of Literature Award for The Bloody Chamber

Criticism and studies of Angela Carter

• See scholarship and criticism on Angela Carter

Further reading

• Quotes by Angela Carter
• Scholarship and criticism on Angela Carter