The Invention of Angela Carter

The Invention of Angela Carter PDF Author: Edmund Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190626860
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Widely acknowledged as one of the most important English writers of the last century, Angela Carter's work stands out for its bawdiness and linguistic zest, its hospitality to the fantastical and the absurd, and its extraordinary inventiveness and range. Her life was as vigorously modern and unconventional as anything in her fiction. This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself - as a new kind of woman and a new kind of writer - and how she came to write such seductive and distinctive masterworks as The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus, and Wise Children. Because its subject so powerfully embodied the spirit of the times, the book also provides a fresh perspective on Britain's social and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines such topics as the 1960s counterculture, the social and imaginative conditions of the nuclear age, and the advent of second wave feminism. Author Edmund Gordon has followed in Angela Carter's footsteps - travelling to the places she lived in Britain, Japan, and the USA - to uncover a life rich in adventure and incident. With unrestricted access to her manuscripts, letters, and journals, and informed by interviews with Carter's friends and family, Gordon offers an unrivalled portrait of one of the twentieth century's most dazzlingly original writers. This sharply written narrative will be the definitive biography for years to come.

The Invention of Angela Carter

The Invention of Angela Carter PDF Author: Edmund Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190626844
Category : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
"With unprecedented access to its subject's personal records and informed by fresh, unvarnished anecdotes from family, friends, and colleagues, Edmund Gordon's biography provides the first full account of Angela Carter's amazing life and enduring work"--

The Invention of Angela Carter

The Invention of Angela Carter PDF Author: Edmund Gordon
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448137071
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD NBCC AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE 2017 SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator and Observer Angela Carter’s life was as unconventional as anything in her fiction. Through her fearlessly original and inventive books, including The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus, she became an icon to a generation and one of the most acclaimed English writers of the last hundred years. This is her first full and authorised biography. Edmund Gordon uncovers Carter’s life story – from a young woman trying to write in a tiny bedsit in Tokyo, to one of the most important and daring writers of her day. From a life full of adventure sprang work so fantastic, dazzling and seductive that it permanently changed and reinvigorated British literature. This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself. 'An exemplary piece of work... Everyone should read it' Spectator

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140235191
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The transformation of Desiderio's city into a mysterious kingdom is instantaneous: Hallucination flows with magical speed in every brain; avenues and plazas are suddenly as fertile as fairy-book forests. And the evil comes, too, as imaginary massacres fill the streets with blood, the dead return to question the living, and profound anxiety drives hundreds to suicide. Behind it all stands Doctor Hoffman, whose gigantic generators crack the immutable surfaces of time and space and plunge civilization into a world without the chains – or structures – of reason. Only Desiderio, immune to mirages and fantasy, can defeat him. But Desiderio's battle will take him to the very brink of undeniable, irresistible desire.

Black Venus

Black Venus PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409042146
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Extraordinary and diverse people inhabit this rich, ripe, occasionally raucous collection of short stories. Some are based on real people - Jeanne Duval, Baudelaire's handsome and reluctant muse who never asked to be called the Black Venus, trapped in the terminal ennui of the poet's passion, snatching at a little lifesaving respectability against all odds...Edgar Allen Poe, with his face of a actor, demonstrating in every thought and deed how right his friends were when they said 'No man is safe who drinks before breakfast.' And some of these people are totally imaginary. Such as the seventeenth century whore, transported to Virginia for thieving, who turns into a good woman in spite of herself among the Indians, who have nothing worth stealing. And a girl, suckled by wolves, strange and indifferent as nature, who will not tolerate returning to humanity. Angela Carter wonderfully mingles history, fiction, invention, literary criticism, high drama and low comedy in a glorious collection of stories as full of contradictions and surprises as life itself.

Shaking a Leg

Shaking a Leg PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140276955
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
"An electrifying intellectual autobiography, with all the narrative expanse, drama, outrage, and high comedy of the author’s fiction. Angela Carter is revealed here, anew, as one of the most important thinkers of twentieth-century world literature—and one of its most pungent voices.”—Rick Moody One of contemporary literature’s most original and affecting fiction writers, Angela Carter also wrote brilliant nonfiction. Shaking a Leg comprises the best of her essays and criticism, much of it collected for the first time. Carter’s acute observations are spiked with her piercing matter-of-factness, her devastating wit, her penchant for mockery, and her passion for the absurd. Whether discussing films or food, feminism or fantasy, science fiction or sex, Carter consistently explores new territories and overturns old ideas. No cultural icon escapes her scrutiny; as in her fiction, Carter offers glorious evidence of the transforming power of the imagination. From delightfully wicked commentaries on Gone with the Wind, a Japanese fertility festival, and fellow writers, including Lawrence, Lovecraft, Borges, and Burroughs, to enchanting personal essays, Carter shares her thoughts and herself with glee. “What a wonderful collection—sharp, funny, too decent for sarcasm but great wit and humanity, an unusual combination. But it makes us miss her, miss laughing with her, that real, intelligent, tough writing woman.”—Grace Paley

Wise Children

Wise Children PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786826925
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
In Brixton, Nora and Dora Chance – twin chorus girls born and bred south of the river – are celebrating their 75th birthday. Over the river in Chelsea, their father and greatest actor of his generation Melchior Hazard turns 100 on the same day. As does his twin brother Peregrine. If, in fact, he's still alive. And if, in truth, Melchior is their real father after all... Wise Children is adapted for the stage from Angela Carter's last novel about a theatrical family living in South London. It centres around twin chorus girls, Nora and Dora Chance, whose lives are brimming with mystery, illegitimacy and scandal. Dora narrates the story as her older self, looking back on a tumultuous life, throughout which she and her sister have loved to sing and dance. A big, bawdy tangle of theatrical joy and heartbreak, Wise Children is a celebration of show business, family, forgiveness and hope. Expect show girls and Shakespeare, sex and scandal, music, mischief and mistaken identity – and butterflies by the thousand.

The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143107615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
For the 75th anniversary of her birth, a Deluxe Edition of the master of the literary supernatural’s most celebrated book—featuring a new introduction by Kelly Link Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Heroes and Villains

Heroes and Villains PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141968370
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape. There, beyond the wire fences, she will discover a decaying paradise, encounter the tattooed Barbarian boy Jewel and go beyond the darkest limits of her imagination. Playful, sensuous, violent and gripping, Heroes and Villains is an ambiguous and deliriously rich blend of post-apocalyptic fiction, gothic fantasy, literary allusion and twisted romance.

Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus PDF Author: Tom Morris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781350208308
Category : Circus performers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
It's 1899 and all of Europe is agape at the arrival of the new century. The world crackles with possibilities and 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. In this dazzling homage to theatre Tom Morris and Emma Rice use a unique blend of story-telling, stage-craft and song to dramatise Angela Carter's popular and highly-regarded novel. Nights at the Circus opened at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in February 2006 followed by a UK tour.