Angela Carter, 1940 - 1992

Biography of Angela Carter

Angela Carter, a British novelist, was born as Angela Olive Stalker in the town of Eastbourne in the year 1940. While still young, Angela and her maternal grandmother were evacuated to Yorkshire, where she suffered from anorexia for the majority of her teenage years.

Her first writing position was with the Croydon Advertiser where she worked as a journalist. She went on to attend the University of Bristol and obtain a degree in English literature.

Her first husband was Paul Carter, who she married in 1960. After nine years of marriage, Angela left her husband using the money which she had won through the Somerset Maugham Award and she moved to Tokyo for two years. Her experience in Japan was immortalized in 1974 in Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, a series of short stories, as well as in her book, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman which was written in 1972.

After leaving Japan, Angela Carter spent many years writing at different universities in Europe and the United States such as Brown University in the U.S. the University of Adelaide in Australia, and the University of East Anglia in England. She married again in 1977 to a man named Mark Pearce. Their marriage resulted in the birth of one son.

Carter wrote many novels, works of nonfiction, anthologies, as well as several articles. These articles include The Independent, The Guardian, and New Statesman. Many of her famous short stories were released on the radio and a couple of her fictional works were made into films. In addition to completing her own works, she also attempted to write a sequel to the famous book, Jane Eyre, which was written by Charlotte Bronte. However, she passed away before it could be completed.

Her novels include Shadow Dance, The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Several Perceptions, The Donkey Prince, Miss Z in 1970, Love, The Music People, Moonshadow, Nights at the Circus which was a winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Artificial Fire, Wise Children, and Sea-Cat & Dragon King which was released posthumously in 2000.
Her anthologies include Expletives Deleted in 1974, The Bloody Chamber, Comic and Curious Cats, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, Black Venus, and Burning Your Boats in 1995.

Angela Carter also published three works of nonfiction including The Sadeian Woman & the Ideology of Pornography in 1978, Nothing Sacred in 1982, and Images of Frida Kahlo in 1989.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer in the year 1991, the same year she published her novel Wise Children, and passed away the year after at the age of 52. She was named one of the most examined of English writers fifteen years after her premature death.

Little known 20th Century novelists