Angela Carter
A literary sorceress who rewrote fairy tales with a feminist, sensual, and violently imaginative twist.
1940–1992 (age 52)·English novelist·Birthday: May 7·The Silent Generation
Biography
Angela Carter was a literary incendiary device. With a prose style of lush, baroque excess and a fiercely intellectual mind, she spent her career dismantling the patriarchal myths embedded in Western culture, most famously in fairy tales. Her work, novels like 'The Magic Toyshop' and 'Nights at the Circus,' is a heady brew of Gothic horror, magical realism, and picaresque adventure, populated by wolf-men, winged aerialists, and cunning heroines. She stripped the passive virgins from old stories and replaced them with sexually aware, dangerously curious women. Her 1979 collection, 'The Bloody Chamber,' remains a landmark, its stories visceral and transformative. Carter lived vividly, with periods in Japan and the American South, experiences that further fueled her critique of social structures. Though she died young, her influence is vast, seeding the ground for generations of writers who see fiction not as a mirror to life, but as a tool to smash it open and examine the glittering pieces.
The Silent Generation
1928–1945
Born between the Depression and the end of WWII. Too young to fight, old enough to remember. They became the conformist middle managers of the 1950s — and the civil rights leaders who quietly dismantled Jim Crow.
Angela was born in 1940, placing them squarely in The Silent Generation. The events that shaped this generation — world wars, depression, and rapid industrialization — shaped the world they entered and the choices available to them.
#1 When Angela Was Born
The biggest hits of 1940
#1 Movie
Fantasia
Best Picture
Rebecca
Angela's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1940Born
The Blitz: Germany bombs London
Gas: $0.18/galHome: $2,938Min wage: $0.30/hrPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"I'll Never Smile Again" — Tommy DorseyBest Picture: Rebecca
1945Started school
WWII ends; atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Gas: $0.21/galHome: $4,600Min wage: $0.40/hrPresident: Harry S. Truman"Sentimental Journey" — Les Brown & Doris DayBest Picture: The Lost Weekend
1953Became a teenager
DNA structure discovered by Watson and Crick
Gas: $0.27/galHome: $8,750Min wage: $0.75/hrPresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower"Song from Moulin Rouge" — Percy FaithBest Picture: From Here to Eternity
1956Could drive
Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show
Gas: $0.30/galHome: $10,050Min wage: $1.00/hrPresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower"Heartbreak Hotel" — Elvis PresleyBest Picture: Around the World in 80 Days
1958Could vote
NASA founded
Gas: $0.31/galHome: $11,050Min wage: $1.00/hrPresident: Dwight D. Eisenhower"Volare" — Domenico ModugnoBest Picture: Gigi
1961Turned 21
Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space
Gas: $0.31/galHome: $12,500Min wage: $1.15/hrPresident: John F. Kennedy"Tossin' and Turnin'" — Bobby LewisBest Picture: West Side Story
1970Turned 30
First Earth Day; The Beatles break up
Gas: $0.36/galHome: $17,000Min wage: $1.60/hrPresident: Richard Nixon"Bridge over Troubled Water" — Simon & GarfunkelBest Picture: Patton
1980Turned 40
John Lennon shot and killed in New York
Gas: $1.19/galHome: $47,200Min wage: $3.10/hrPresident: Jimmy Carter"Call Me" — BlondieBest Picture: Ordinary People
1990Turned 50
Hubble Space Telescope launched; Germany reunifies
Gas: $1.15/galHome: $79,100Min wage: $3.80/hrPresident: George H.W. Bush"Hold On" — Wilson PhillipsBest Picture: Dances with Wolves
1992Died at 52
LA riots after Rodney King verdict
Gas: $1.13/galHome: $84,300Min wage: $4.25/hrPresident: George H.W. Bush"End of the Road" — Boyz II MenBest Picture: Unforgiven
Key Achievements
- Published 'The Bloody Chamber' (1979), a seminal collection of feminist fairy tale retellings that transformed the genre.
- Her novel 'Nights at the Circus' (1984) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and is considered a masterpiece of magical realism.
- Her short story 'The Company of Wolves' was adapted into a celebrated 1984 film by Neil Jordan.
- Ranked tenth in The Times' 2008 list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Did You Know?
She worked as a journalist in the early 1960s, including a stint writing features for the UK's *The Guardian*.
She lived in Japan for two years in the early 1970s, an experience that deeply influenced her writing.
She was a passionate smoker and was famously photographed with a cigarette in hand.
She translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault, the very stories she would later subvert in her own work.
“"We live in Gothic times."”
