Angela Carter
Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, née Stalker; 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[1] In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.[2]
Angela Carter
Angela Olive Stalker
7 May 1940
Eastbourne, England
16 February 1992 (aged 51)
London, England
Novelist, short story writer, poet, journalist
1
Biography[edit]
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, to Sophia Olive (née Farthing; 1905–1969), a cashier at Selfridge's, and journalist Hugh Alexander Stalker (1896–1988),[3] Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother.[4] After attending Streatham and Clapham High School, in south London, she began work as a journalist on The Croydon Advertiser,[5] following in her father's footsteps. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.[6][7]
She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter,[5] divorcing in 1972. In 1969, she used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982) that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised".[8] 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 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 met Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son and whom she married shortly before her death.[9] In 1979, both The Bloody Chamber, and her feminist essay, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography,[10] appeared. In The Bloody Chamber, she rewrote fairy tales so as to subvert their essentializing tendencies. In her 1985 interview with Helen Cagney, Carter said, “So I suppose that what interests me is the way these fairy tales and folklore are methods of making sense of events and certain occurrences in a particular way”.[11] Sarah Gamble, therefore, argued that Carter’s book is a manifestation of her materialism, that is, “her desire to bring fairy tale back down to earth in order to demonstrate how it could be used to explore the real conditions of everyday life".[12] In The Sadeian Woman, according to the writer Marina Warner, Carter "deconstructs the arguments that underlie The Bloody Chamber. It's about desire and its destruction, the self-immolation of women, how women collude and connive with their condition of enslavement. She was much more independent-minded than the traditional feminist of her time."[13]
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.[14] 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 film: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1967). She was actively involved in both adaptations;[15] her screenplays were subsequently published in The Curious Room, a collection of her dramatic writings, including radio scripts and a libretto for an opera based on Orlando. Carter's novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature. Her 1991 novel Wise Children offers a surreal wild ride through British theatre and music hall traditions.
Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer.[16][17] At the time of her death, she had started work on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens; only a synopsis survives.[18]
Commemoration[edit]
English Heritage unveiled a blue plaque at Carter's final home at 107, The Chase in Clapham, South London in September 2019. She wrote many of her books in the sixteen years she lived at the address, as well as tutoring the young Kazuo Ishiguro.[19]
The British Library acquired the Angela Carter Papers in 2008, a large collection of 224 files and volumes containing manuscripts, correspondence, personal diaries, photographs, and audio cassettes.[20]
Angela Carter Close in Brixton is named after her.[21]