Most Popular Books by Angela Carter

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, the author of the national bestseller The Book of Love and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper 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.

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.

Desiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman''s mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor''s daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams. Meeting on his adventures a host of cannibals, centaurs and acrobats, Desiderio must battle against unreality and the warping of time and space to be with her, as the Doctor reduces Desiderio''s city to a chaotic state of emergency - one ridden with madness, crime and sexual excess. A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.

One of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident. This volume presents Carter''s considerable legacy of short fiction gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories. From reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of classic folklore and fairy tales, to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, we are able to chart the evolution of Carter''s marvelous, magical vision.

a) The Unicorn As with the night-scented stock, the full splendour of the unicorn manifests itself most potently at twilight. Then the horn sprouts, swells, blooms in all its glory. SEE THE HORN (bend the tab, slit in slot marked ''x'') Despite being one of the most influential - and best-loved - of the post-war English writers, Angela Carter remains little-known as a poet. In Unicorn, the critic and historian Rosemary Hill collects together her published verse from 1963-1971, a period in which Carter began to explore the themes that dominated her later work: magic, the reworking of myths and their darker sides, and the overturning of literary and social conventions. With imagery at times startling in its violence and disconcerting in its presentation of sexuality, Unicorn provides compelling insight into the formation of a remarkable imagination. In the essay that accompanies the poems the critic and historian Rosemary Hill considers them in the context of Carter''s other work and as an aspect of the 1960s, the decade which as Carter put it ''wasn''t like they say in the movies''.

From the master of the literary supernatural and author of The Bloody Chamber, a startling tale of the redemptive power of physical and emotional love One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother''s wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she has never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure gardens. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshop. This classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative work.

This classic book by a prominent feminist figure is a daring and provocative look at the relationship of sexuality to power using the extraordinary perception of the French revolutionary the Marquis de Sade as a point of departure for her own controversial insights.

People and animals are never what they seem. Men turn into werewolves in Angela Carter''s classic play The Company of Wolves (now turned into a film). A beautiful girl turns out to be a vampire in Vampirella, a Transylvanian fable shadowed by the Great War. Meanwhile, Puss in Boots is out on the tiles, in a breathless entertainment. In Come Unto These Yellow Sand Carter takes you inside the eerie paintings of Richard Dadd '' to hear the beings within - the monsters produced by represssion - squeak and gibber and tell the truth''. In her introduction Angela Carter discusses the problems and delights of writing for radio: ''Radio retains the atavistic lure, the atavistic power, of voices in the dark, and the writers who gives he words to those voices retains some of the authority of the most antique tellers of tales''. The book includes nine reproductions of pictures by or of Richard Dadd.

"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

Short stories inspired by America, written during the last ten years, none of which have appeared in book form before.

Set in 1899. Through the circus flier F̀evvers'', the author mocks cliches of Gothic romance, melodrama, farce, fairytale, and utopian vision.

Once upon a time fairy talesweren''t meant just for children, and neither is AngelaCarter''s Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collectioncontains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariouslyfunny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all aroundthe world- from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippyprincesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have prettymaids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls;enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters.This fabulous celebration of strong minds, low cunning,black arts and dirty tricks could only have beencollected by the unique and much-missed Angela Carter.Illustrated throughout with original woodcuts.

"An absolutely unique voice...It would be an impertinence to call these eight delightful concoctions stories…A virtuoso Mendelssohn of fiction." -- The New York Times Book Review Drawing on American history, literary legend, and folk tale, Angela Carter transports us to that shadowy country between fact and myth in this book of short stories. Lizzy Borden, the spinster daughter of a glutton and a compulsive miser, ticks off the hours before a murder. An eighteenth-century whore and pickpocket who runs off to join the Indians tells her story in a voice of bawdy authenticity. Carter immerses us in the worlds of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire, of khans, princesses, and kitchen boys, bringing them to life in prose of seductive richness and perverse wit. In The Bloody Chamber, said The New York Times Book Review, Carter rewrote classic fairy tales "with all her supple and intoxicating bravura." In Saints and Strangers, she is just as audacious, and the result is a book of thoroughly contemporary folk tales that belong utterly to Angela Carter.

A collection of short stories full of extraordinary people, some of them real - Jean Duval, Baudelaire''s black mistress; Edgar Allan Poe and Lizzie Borden. Other characters flow from a fantastic imagination.

''Curiosity is the most fleeting of pleasures; the moment is satisfied, it ceases to exist and it always proves very, very expensive.'' Angela Carter''s playful and subversive retellings of Charles Perrault''s classic fairy tales conjure up a world of resourceful women, black-hearted villains, wily animals and incredible transformations. In these seven stories, bristling with frank, earthy humour and gothic imagination, nothing is as it seems. This book includes Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty of the Wood, Cinderella: or, The Glass Slipper, Ricky with the Tuft and The Foolish Wishes.