Angela Carter

This second edition reviews Carter's novels in the light of recent critical developments and offers entirely new perspectives on her work. There are now extended single chapters on Carter's most widely-studied novels, including The Passion of New Eve and Nights at the Circus, and discussion of the long essay "The Sadeian Woman."

At the time of her death in 1992, Angela Carter had become one of the most important and widely read British writers. In the first book-length study devoted to her novels, Linden Peach demonstrates how Carter's fiction has retained the power to shock us, move us and make us laugh. This lively book provides both close readings of individual texts and an overview of her work. Although Carter preferred a mode of writing closer to fantasy than the English realist novel and frequently drew on prenovelistic forms, Linden Peach maintains that she still addressed the 'actuality' of people's lives. In novels crammed with themes, ideas and images, Carter is seen as blurring the boundaries between literature, philosophy and cultural critique.

Booknews

In analyzing the work of the widely-read<-->especially after her death<-->British writer, Angela Carter (1940- 1992), Peach (contemporary literature, Loughborough U., UK) offers an overview of her nine novels and other writings, an in-depth discussion of her first novel (, 1966), the Gothic heritage informing her perceptions of post-war Britain, the theme of theater/fantasy as sources of illegitimate power, and interpretations within critical frameworks derived from Brecht, Melanie Klein, and others. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

LINDEN PEACH is Professor of English and Head of the English and History Department at Edge Hill University, UK.