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Reading lists

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

A host of short story collections photographed against a red background

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12 short story collections to sink into

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Where to start with Angela Carter’s books

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What to read after The Handmaid’s Tale

The Angela Carter BBC Radio Drama Collection

Angela Carter was one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. A pioneer of British magical realism, her work was described by Salman Rushdie as 'without rival and without equal'. Her radical, inventive novels influenced countless writers, while her dark, sensual short fiction turned traditional fables inside out, giving women the power over their desires and fates. 
 
Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter's literary executor and friend, introduces the productions and offers fascinating insights into Angela Carter's life and work. 
 
This landmark collection includes five new dramatisation of stories from her iconic collection of fairytales retold, The Bloody Chamber. Alongside the title story are 'The Erl-King', 'Wolf-Alice', 'The Tiger's Bride' and 'The Company of Wolves', with casts including Sophie Cookson, Ariyon Bakare, Lily Lesser, Hannah Genesius and Adjoa Andoh. A sixth tale from The Bloody Chamber, 'Puss in Boots', is adapted by Carter herself and stars Andrew Sachs as Puss. 
 
Also included is an adaptation of Carter's award-winning Nights at the Circus, starring Roisin Conaty as Cockney trapeze artist Sophie Fevvers, and the world premiere of her unproduced screenplay The Christchurch Murder. Based on the real-life story of two New Zealand schoolgirls who killed for love, it was an inspiration for the Peter Jackson film Heavenly Creatures, and stars Fiona Shaw, Nancy Carroll and James Wilby. 
 
Accompanying these are three thrilling radio plays: the Gothic Vampirella (starring Jessica Raine and Anton Lesser); the hallucinatory drama-documentary Come Unto These Yellow Sands (featuring James Anthony Rose as patricidal painter Richard Dadd); and an exploration of the life of Ronald Firbank, A Self-Made Man (with Lewis Fiander as Firbank). 
 
Finally, Liza Ross reads the short story 'Lizzie's Tiger', originally commissioned for radio, in which the four-year-old Lizzie Borden has an extraordinary encounter at the circus. 
 
A bonus documentary, Third Ear: Angela Carter, comprises Paul Bailey's lively interview with the author, recorded shortly before her death in 1992. In it, she discusses her novel Wise Children, and examines the impact of Britishness, politics, and the oral tradition on her subversive writing. 
 
Contents 
1 Introduction 
2 The Bloody Chamber 
3 The Erl-King 
4 Wolf-Alice 
5 The Tiger's Bride 
6 The Company of Wolves 
7 The Christchurch Murder 
8-9 Nights at the Circus (in two parts) 
10 Vampirella 
11 Come Unto These Yellow Sands 
12 Puss in Boots 
13 A Self-Made Man 
14 Lizzie's Tiger 
15 Third Ear: An Interview with Angela Carter 
 
Credits 
Linking material by Susannah Clapp was produced by Caroline Raphael at Dora Productions. 
 
The Bloody Chamber stories, The Christchurch Murder, Vampirella and Come Unto These Yellow Sands were produced by Fiona McAlpine at Allegra Productions. 
 
All other programmes produced by the BBC. 
 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.

The Bloody Chamber, Wise Children, Fireworks

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

An omnibus of works by the great novelist and short-story writer, showcasing her hauntingly erotic fabulism and the subversive richness of her imagination.

She writes a prose that lends itself to magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality

Angela Carter, for me, is still the one who said: "You see these fairy stories? Actually, each one of them is a loaded gun. Each of them is a bomb. Watch: if you turn it right it will blow up.

In The Bloody Chamber, Carter's famous collection of deeply unsettling stories inspired by fairy tales, a Beauty is turned into a Beast and Little Red Riding's grandmother is stoned to death as a witch; a young music student is swept off her feet in Paris by a middle-aged aristocrat and transported to his ancestral abode to re-enact the story of Bluebeard against a sumptuous fin de siècle background; a British soldier on a cycling holiday in Transylvania in the summer of 1914 finds himself the guest of an alluring female vampire. By contrast, in Wise Children, Carter's last novel), the comic, the bawdy and the life-enhancing prevail. An irrepressible elderly lady recalls the many colourful decades she and her sister spent as vaudeville performers - a tale as full of twins and mistaken identities as any plot of Shake- speare's. The early collection, Fireworks, reveals Carter taking her first forays into the fantastic writing that was to become her unforgettable legacy. The Everyman's Library omnibus gathers the best of Angela Carter in one astonishing volume.

Fireworks

The first short story collection by Angela Carter – the book that presaged The Bloody Chamber.

It is hard to imagine the literary landscape without Angela Carter. Hers is a legacy that extends way beyond the bounds of her own work

I can't think of anyone who is at that pitch of intellectual commentary, fictional experimentation and fullness of expression. I'm not a patch on her. Jesus, I wish I was

Its autobiographical stories set in Japan, where she had gone to live with a Japanese lover, give off a direct and poignant emotion. They show her changing, too

Daringly and dangerously erotic, exploring the dark recesses of female sexuality

Still remarkable for their darkly allusive imagery...this collection displays the same slightly chilling morality as her early novels

‘I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.’ So says Angela Carter of this collection, written during a period living in Toyko. These exotic, sensuous stories represent Carter’s first major achievement in the short story form. Lush imaginary forests, a murderous puppet show and an expressionistic vision of Japan: each one instantly conjures an atmosphere, dark and luminous in turn, and from the recognisably daring imagination of one of the great twentieth-century stylists.

Collected Journalism and Writings

Shaking A Leg

Forthright, funny, unpredictable: Carter is capable of illuminating any topic with the brilliance of her prose.

Shaking a Leg reveals a stunning range of interests that marks her out not just as one of our greatest novelists and short story writers but as one of our best literary and cultural critics... If you would like better to understand the workings of the second half of our century, then this is the book

Reading Shaking a Leg is like sitting down with a friend who is clever, funny, outrageous, compassionate, anecdotal and sociologically aware; someone with a great memory and a quirky, associative train of thought; someone who can make you laugh and say "yes" out loud before you turn the page to devour her next paragraph, whether it be about Hollywood or Venice, her dotty parents or her favourite writers. Carter is endlessly entertaining, endearing and down-to-earth in this admirably comprehensive collection

It is her journalism, collected in the 1997 volume 'Shaking a Leg', to which I find myself returning again and again, struck freshly by its forthrightness, its imagination, its unpredictability - and by the sheer range of subjects on which she was fluent

The range of her interests is quite dazzling. She is the voice of an entire generation

Shocking, willful, extravagant - every cut and quip at the same time reveals a striking intellectual acuity

This collection is a must... The writing is trenchant, acerbic, witty, probing, and often critically subtle

Some of her best, wittiest writing is here...Shaking a Leg contains some of the best essays since Orwell

Shaking a Leg...explains what makes her a great and indispensable talent...there's the gold she left behind in this book, a treasury of her life and art and thought

A treasure trove...You quickly start needing to read bits out to people...For one thing she's extremely funny: for another, she's cantankerous as hell, with a bullshit antenna of NASA-engineered proportions...Stunning, an inspiring, delightful breath of air

Shaking a Leg is packed with deliciously tongue-in-cheek wit about the everyday world of the 1970s and 1980s. She is mistress of the arresting opening and the bathetic end

These essays on culture and society first appeared from the Sixties to the Eighties: together, they prove that the despised press could breed the best in post-war thinking and writing; and that, in an age of woozy fantasy, witty rationality could still prevail

Incisive cultural journalism by the British novelist that among other delicious subversions invokes the Greeks to argue for wearing high heels with long skirts

Angela Carter was born in 1940 and read English at Bristol University, before spending two years living in Japan. She lived and worked extensively in the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by The Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of short stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL COOKE 
 
Reading Shaking a Leg is like spending time with the funniest, wisest friend you’ve ever had; a person whose breadth of interest ranges from food to feminism to science fiction, and everything in between; a person with an entirely unpredictable train of thought but whose exuberance, knowledge and insight sweeps you along. Bursting with ideas, culturally astute and sparklingly witty, this comprehensive volume of Angela Carter’s journalism is the most down-to-earth and entertaining companion to latter twentieth-century thought you’ll ever need.

Collected Dramatic Works

The Curious Room

Angela Carter's startling and inventive collected dramatic works

The Curious Room brims with life...Fear, desire and mischievous wonder blend to make her work irresistible.

Carter knew all about making images work in theatre. The proof is here, on the printed page...One of the pleasures of this book is watching a writer's imagination translate itself into visual and aural effects. We're allowed backstage, to peep at the wonderous machines of illusion.

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She read English at Bristol University, and from 1976-8 was a fellow in Creative Writing at Sheffield University. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by The Magic Toyshop (1967, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Several Perceptions (1968), Love (1971), The Passion of New Eve (1977), Nights at the Circus (1984, James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and Wise Children (1991). Three collections of her short stories have been published, Fireworks (1974) The Bloody Chamber (1979, Cheltenham Festival of Literature Award) and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders (1993). She was author of The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979) and two collections of journalism, Nothing Sacred and Expletives Deleted (1992). She died in February 1992.

The Vintage Collected Edition of Angela Carter's works continues with THE CURIOUS ROOM, which contains her dramatic writings, including several previously unpublished plays and screenplays. THE CURIOUS ROOM includes a radio play about the demented Victorian painter and parricide Richard Dadd; reworkings of Puss in Boots and the Dracula story; a draft for an opera of Virginia Woolf's ORLANDO, as well as the film scripts of THE MAGIC TOYSHOP and THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. Revealing many of the enthusiasms and concerns which ignited Carter's fiction. THE CURIOUS ROOM is full of magnificent and startling new material, charged with the range and power of Carter's imagination and inventiveness.

Wise Children

'One of the century's finest writers' Sunday Times

Wise Children is Angela Carter's best book. It deserves many prizes and, better than that, the affection of generations of readers

A funny, funny book, Wise Children is even better than Nights at the Circus. It deserves all the bouquets, diamonds and stage-door Johnnies it can get

Wonderful writing...there is not much fiction around that is as good as this

Delightful...this is rich prose which demands thought. It's also wickedly funny and a great read

Quite brilliant in every sense of the word

Angela Carter was born in 1940 and read English at Bristol University, before spending two years living in Japan. She lived and worked extensively in the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by the Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of Short Stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALI SMITH 
 
A richly comic tale of the tangled fortunes of two theatrical families, the Hazards and the Chances, Angela Carter's witty and bawdy novel is populated with as many sets of twins, and mistaken identities as any Shakespeare comedy, and celebrates the magic of over a century of show business.

Angela Carter

Helen Simpson

A special edition of the feminist cult classic

A beautiful hardback edition of Angela Carter's feminist retelling of fairy tales - masterful, seductive and luminous. 
 
From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories. 
 
'Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality' Ian McEwan 
 
'A quirky, original, and baroque stylist' Margaret Atwood 
 
VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful 
 
INTRODUCED BY HELEN SIMPSON

Angela Carter

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

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