Angela Carter
Who was she?
Angela Olive Pearce who wrote under the name of Angela Carter was an English novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist known for her feminist, magical realism and picaresque works. She reshaped motifs from mythology, legends, and fairy tales in her books, lending them a ghastly humor and eroticism. Angela Carter passed away on February 16, 1992 in London, England at the age of fifty-one due to lung cancer. She married her first husband Paul Carter when she was just nineteen however they got divorced twelve years later. Despite this she kept using his last name while publishing even after getting married to her second husband Mark Pearce.
Early life
Angela Olive Stalker
who published under the name Angela Carter was born on May 7, 1940, in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. She grew up in a fairly conservative family in the mist of World War II with an overprotective mother and a journalist father, Hugh Alexander Stalker who had an influence in her career. She attended the University of Bristol where she studied English Literature however during this time she struggled with anorexia which shaped her views on the female body and societal expectations.
References
Hill, R. (2016, October 22). The invention of Angela Carter. The Guardian, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/22/the-invention-of-angela-carter-a-biography-by-edmund-gordon-review
Career and Style
Her writing life began in her early 20s in Bristol, where she and her first husband, Paul Carter, were part of the folk scene Angela Carter's debut novel "Shadow dance" was first published in 1966 and gained moderate success as well as "The Magic Toyshop" published in 1967, which was later made into a movie in 1986.
In 1969, Carter escaped her failing marriage by using money from a prestigious literary award to travel to Japan, where she lived periodically for the next few years. Her biography, The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography, published in 2016 by Edmund Gordon brushed a new light on the influence Japan had in her writing and how she played as a mentor to Nobel Literature Prize Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. It "completely changed her as an artist, as a writer, as a person," said Edmund Gordon. Her experience in Japan influenced her work with the publishing of the collection of short stories "Fireworks" in 1974 and the publishing nonfiction essays about the author Yukio Mishima, fertility festivals and other elements of Japanese culture.
However it was her late works like the Bloody Chamber published in 1979 that solidified her legacy. Angela Carter wrote a total of sixteen books during her career, including novels, short-stories collections, and non-fiction works. She won a total of three awards and is often cited as one of the most influential British writers of the 20th century. She also inspired and continues to inspire numerous people from Filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro and Neil Jordan. Neil Jordan adapted Carter's The Company of Wolves (1984), a feminist reworking of the Little Red Riding Hood story, into a film in 1984. To the lead singer of Florence + The Machine who has spoken about Carter's influence on her creative vision. Angela Carter's work inspired people but it continues to inspire artists in the complete sense of the word whether its in music, cinema or writing.
References
Gordon, E. (2016, October 1). Angela Carter: Far from the Fairytale. The Guardian, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/01/angela-carter-far-from-fairytale-edmund-gordon
Pullan, I. (2017, December 7).Japan's influence on author Angela Carter revealed in new biography. Kyodo News, from https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2017/12/4e0b9c5f4691-feature-japans-influence-on-british-author-carter-revealed-in-new-biography.html