Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Angela Carter
-
Standard Name: Carter, Angela
Birth Name: Angela Olive Stalker
Married Name: Angela Olive Carter
AC
was a prolific writer in many genres throughout the later twentieth century. Best known for her novels and short stories, she also wrote plays (for radio, screen and stage), poetry, children's stories, journal articles, an opera libretto, and a critical work on the Marquis de Sade
(as well as on pornography and women's relation to it). A translator of Charles Perrault
's fairy tales, she edited several fairy-tale collections, and an anthology of women's tales. Her name is prominent in critical discussion of various recent modes of fiction: magic realist, gothic, and feminist.
To critic Andrew ManghamThe White Maniac examplifies a Victorian fascination with the potential for violence and irrationality in female adolescents, and detection as sustain[ing] a number of social hierarchies through the actual and figurative...
Performance of text
Bryony Lavery
BL
's stage adaptation of Angela Carter
's The Bloody Chamber opened at Northern Stage
in Newcastle
Mslexia. Mslexia Publications.
38: 69
Publishing
Pat Barker
PB
says that one stage she threw away the manuscript of this novel in despair, but her husband
rescued it from the bin.
Jaggi, Maya. “Pat Barker. Dispatches from the front”. The Guardian, pp. G2: 16 - 19.
18
She said she felt the absence of models for writing fiction...
Textual Features
Bryony Lavery
The Magic Toyshop, which BL
adapted from Angela Carter
's second novel (published in 1967) and seen at the Dublin Fringe Festival in October 2001, is a gothic fantasy about a mad, patriarchal toy-maker.
Textual Features
A. S. Byatt
Her selection (limited to English, not merely British, writers) determinedly eschews the well-known. She seeks the startling and the satisfying, selecting both lesser-known writers like Leonora Carrington
or Elizabeth Taylor
, and unexpected stories...
Pursuing her established interest in the Black presence in Europe, MS
here relates the story of Duval
, mistress of the French poet Charles Baudelaire
, the Black Venus of his poetry, who was fictionalised...
Textual Features
Emma Tennant
The story is presented as a spellbinding tale told to little girls by the ancient crone-like Grandmother Dummer. Beginning with traditional tales, she moves to an updated, feminist fairy story in the manner of Angela Carter
MW
's passion for books began early. Describing her motivations for writing, she says I was a bookworm as a child because I liked entering other worlds through stories.
Warner, Marina. “Why I Write”. Kunapipi, Vol.
16
, No. 1, Dangaroo Press, Aarhus, Denmark, p. 505.
505
To her, writing was also...
Textual Production
Marina Warner
Warner has written a significant number of book introductions to texts including Christine de Pisan
's The Book of the City of Ladies, Angela Carter
's edited volume The Second Virago Book of Fairy...
Textual Production
Bryony Lavery
BL
's numerous plays for radio include some original and some adapted from other works: Laying Ghosts, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Velma and Therese (a parallel version of the film Thelma and...
With her background in academia and her work reviewing fiction for The Scotsman and The Guardian, AS
has produced an impressive amount of literary criticism. She has written critical introductions for reissues of work...
Textual Production
Christina Stead
At the age of eleven CS
won a district competition for an essay. Her subject (derived from the work of her father
the naturalist) was the life-cycle of the frog. Within a few years she...
