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Find out moreAngela Carter was born in 1940 of a Scottish father and Yorkshire mother. She read English at Bristol University, and after escaping an early marriage went to live in Japan for a number of years. She wrote nine novels, which blend fantasy, science fiction and gothic, and is often referred to as a writer of magic realism. She died in 1992.
'I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.' So says Angela Carter of this collection, written during a period living in Toyko. These exotic, sensuous stories represent Carter's first major achievement in the short story form. Lush imaginary forests, a murderous puppet show and an expressionistic vision of Japan: each one instantly conjures an atmosphere, dark and luminous in turn, and from the recognisably daring imagination of one of the great twentieth-century stylists.
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It's 1899 and all of Europe is agape at the arrival of the new century! The world crackles with possibilities - and its people dance to the irresistible rhythms of money, sex, love and freedom. Swinging above them all is a showbiz sensation; a fierce, vulgar, pant-droppingly sexy trapeze artist called Fevvers. The story charts her unlikely love affair with Walser, a world-weary journalist on a mission to expose her as a fake. Nights at the Circus opened at the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2006. Emma Rice, acclaimed Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre (Tristan & Yseult, The Bacchae) directs Angela Carter's great mythic novel. With rising star Natalia Tena as Fevvers (About a Boy, Mrs Henderson Presents and Shared Experience's Bronte & Gone to Earth) and Gisli Orn Gardarsson as Walser (Young Vic's Romeo & Juliet and Woyzeck).
MOST LOVED. MOST RED. Ten must-read modern classics. 'Nursery fears made flesh and sinew; earliest and most archaic of fears, fear of devourment.' We grow up on fairy tales but it is only later we realise what we have been fed. Angela Carter saw the power of these dark stories - stories in which objects betray, children threaten, men turn into animals and women are unsafe. Erotic, subversive, ancient, modern: the tales in this book pulse with a vivid, radical imagination. Turn the key, enter the chamber. Carter untwists our old tales and offers them up with sensuality, depravity, humour - and a mirror held up to ourselves. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY LAURA DOCKRILL
Once upon a time fairy tales weren't meant just for children, and neither is Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world - from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters. This fabulous celebration of strong minds, low cunning, black arts and dirty tricks could only have been collected by the unique and much-missed Angela Carter. Illustrated throughout with original woodcuts.
This crazy world whirled around her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds are mechanical and the few human figures went masked . . . She was in the night once again, and the doll was herself. One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the home of her childhood, she is sent to live with relatives she has never met: gentle Aunt Margaret, mute since her wedding day; and her brothers, Francie and Finn. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip, who loves only the toys he makes in his workshop: clockwork roses and puppets that are life-size - and uncannily life-like. Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
In The Bloody Chamber, Carter's famous collection of deeply unsettling stories inspired by fairy tales, a Beauty is turned into a Beast and Little Red Riding's grandmother is stoned to death as a witch; a young music student is swept off her feet in Paris by a middle-aged aristocrat and transported to his ancestral abode to re-enact the story of Bluebeard against a sumptuous fin de siecle background; a British soldier on a cycling holiday in Transylvania in the summer of 1914 finds himself the guest of an alluring female vampire. By contrast, in Wise Children, Carter's last novel), the comic, the bawdy and the life-enhancing prevail. An irrepressible elderly lady recalls the many colourful decades she and her sister spent as vaudeville performers - a tale as full of twins and mistaken identities as any plot of Shake- speare's. The early collection, Fireworks, reveals Carter taking her first forays into the fantastic writing that was to become her unforgettable legacy. The Everyman's Library omnibus gathers the best of Angela Carter in one astonishing volume.
Using the cover artwork of our much-loved Virago Modern Classics hardback range, these elegant unlined notebooks celebrate three of our most popular titles: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; and Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. These beautiful notebooks are a must-have for all Virago fans - surely the most stylish way of collecting notes on your favourite books. Or maybe they will inspire you to write a novel of your own . . . Each notebook features a ribbon bookmark, high-quality paper and matching endpapers. The Talented Mr Ripley and The Magic Toyshop feature artwork by vintage textile designers Marian Mahler and Jacqueline Groag. Good Behaviour features a cover by award-winning designers Eley Kishimoto: http://www.eleykishimoto.com/
Using the cover artwork of our much-loved Virago Modern Classics hardback range, these elegant porcelain mugs celebrate three of our most popular titles: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; and Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. They are a must-have for all Virago fans, and are surely the most stylish way to enjoy your morning coffee! Each mug is presented in a beautiful gift-box with corresponding artwork. The mugs are dishwasher and microwave safe. The Talented Mr Ripley and The Magic Toyshop feature artwork by vintage textile designers Marian Mahler and Jacqueline Groag. Good Behaviour features a cover by award-winning designers Eley Kishimoto: http://www.eleykishimoto.com/
With an introduction by Helen Simpson. From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.
This bestselling collection of stories extols the female virtues of discontent, sexual disruptiveness and bad manners Here are subversive tales - by Ama Ata Aidoo, Jane Bowles, Angela Carter, Colette, Bessie Head, Jamaica Kincaid and Katherine Mansfield among others - all have one thing in common: the wish to restore adventuresses and revolutionaries to their rightful position as models for all women Reflecting the wide-ranging intelligence and deliciously anarchic taste of Angela Carter, some of these stories celebrate toughness and resilience, some of them low cunning: all of them are about not being nice.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL COOKE Reading Shaking a Leg is like spending time with the funniest, wisest friend you've ever had; a person whose breadth of interest ranges from food to feminism to science fiction, and everything in between; a person with an entirely unpredictable train of thought but whose exuberance, knowledge and insight sweeps you along. Bursting with ideas, culturally astute and sparklingly witty, this comprehensive volume of Angela Carter's journalism is the most down-to-earth and entertaining companion to latter twentieth-century thought you'll ever need.
Desiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams. Meeting on his adventures a host of cannibals, centaurs and acrobats, Desiderio must battle against unreality and the warping of time and space to be with her, as the Doctor reduces Desiderio's city to a chaotic state of emergency - one ridden with madness, crime and sexual excess. A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.
From the liars of the fantastical and fabular and from the domains of the unconscious's mysteries...lie the brides in the Bloody Chamber - hunts unwillingly the Queen of the Vampires - slips Red Riding Hood into the arms of the Wolf - pimps our Puss-In-Boots for his lustful master. In tales that glitter and haunt - strange nuggets from a writer whose wayward pen spills forth stylish, erotic, nightmarish jewels of prose - the old fairy stories live and breathe again, subtly altered, subtly changed.
In eighteenth century France, Charles Perrault rescued from the oral tradition fairy tales that are known and loved even today by virtually all children in the West. Angela Carter came across Perrault's work and set out to adapt the stories for modern readers of English. In breathing new life into these classic fables, she produced versions that live on as classics in their own right, marked as much by her signature wit, irony, and subversiveness as they are by the qualities that have made them universally appealing for centuries.
Bryony Lavery's new stage adaptation of Angela Carter's story. When a 17 year old virgin marries a mature and charismatic Marquis it seems like a fairy tale. But when the Marquis is called away on their wedding night, leaving her only her only his keys and a single instruction, her curiosity leads her to uncover a dark secret. All is yours, everywhere is open to you, except the lock that the single key fits. You must promise, if you love me, to leave it well alone.
Cover design by Jacqueline Groag 'This crazy world whirled about her, men and women dwarfed by toys and puppets, where even the birds were mechanical and the few human figures went masked . . . She was in the night again, and the doll was herself' One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother's wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave her rural home, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: gentle Aunt Margaret, mute since her wedding day; and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn. Brooding over all is Uncle Philip, who loves only the puppets he creates in his workshop, which are life-sized - and uncannily life-like.
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