About the Author

Angela Carter was born in 1940. When she published her first novel, Shadow Dance, in 1966, she was immediately recognized as one of Britains most original writers. Eight other novels followed: The Magic Toyshop (1967, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Several Perceptions (1968, Somerset Maugham Award), Heroes and Villains (1969), Love (1971), The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), The Passion of New Eve (1977), Nights at the Circus (1984, James Tail Black Memorial Prize), and Wise Children (1991). Angela Carter also published three collections of short stories -- The Bloody Chamber (1979, Cheltenham Festival of Literature Award), Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1984), and Saints and Strangers (1985, published in the U.K. as Black Venus) -- a book of essays called The Sadeian Woman, two collections of journalism, and a volume of radio plays. She translated the fairy stories of Charles Perrault and edited collections of fairy and folk tales as well as Wayward Girls & Wicked Women: An Anthology of Subversive Stories (1986). She also wrote the screenplay for the 1984 film The Company of Wolves, based on her short story. A fourth collection of stories was published in the U.K. in 1993 as American Ghosts and Old World Wonders. Most of Angela Carters fiction is available in the U.S. from Penguin.

From 1976 though 1978 Angela Carter was Arts Council of Great Britain Fellow in Creative Writing at Sheffield University, and from 1980 through 1981 she was visiting professor in the Writing Program at Brown University. She traveled and taught widely in the U.S. and Australia but lived in London. Angela Carter died in February, 1992.