Angela Carter
born May 7, 1940, Eastbourne, Sussex,
Eng.
died Feb. 16, 1992, London
British author who reshaped motifs from
mythology, legends, and fairy tales in her
books, lending them a ghastly humour and
eroticism.
Carter rejected an Oxford education to
work as a journalist with the Croydon
Advertiser, but she later studied medieval
literature at the University of Bristol
(B.A., 1965). She had moderate success with
her novels Shadow Dance (1966; also
published as Honeybuzzard) and The Magic
Toyshop (1967; filmed 1986). Her other
novels include Several Perceptions (1968),
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor
Hoffman (1972), The Passion of New Eve
(1977), and Wise Children (1991). Carter’s
fiction gained new popularity in the 1980s,
notably after the release of the motion
picture The Company of Wolves (1984), which
she cowrote; the film was based on a story
from The Bloody Chamber (1979), a collection
of her adaptations of fairy tales. Her
interest in the macabre and the sensual was
reflected in The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise
in Cultural History (1979), a polemical
study of the female characters in the
writings of the marquis de Sade. She also
wrote radio plays, children’s books, and
essays.
