I think Angela Carter must be one of the presiding spirits haunting (benevolently) the OGOM Project. Her rich and startling prose, full of intelligence and humour, draws on all strands of fantastic narrative–fairy tale, Gothic, science fiction, horror. She has written vampire tales and the stories in The Bloody Chamber are, in a sense, some of the Ur-texts of paranormal romance. And, of course, the wolf tales in that volume and the ensuing film, The Company of Wolves inspired our 2015 conference of that name and animated much of the discussion. And Sir Christopher Frayling, in his fascinating plenary, gave a touching account of his friendship with Carter alongside a discussion of his work (which features in his book, Inside the Bloody Chamber).
Marina Warner–also a frequent subject of this blog–is delivering a masterclass, Myth, Magic & Angela Carter, ‘exploring re-tellings and re-visionings in short fiction’ in London on 27 February 2016. It looks truly fabulous (in every sense).
Carter has attracted much research but her incisive journalism and critical writing has been neglected (as Si Christopher pointed out). So this discussion of her criticism at the LRB blog is very welcome.
Edmund Gordon gives an interesting and useful introductory talk on The Bloody Chamber here.
Reading Angela Carter as a Sixth-Former changed my reading habits, love of English literature and vocabulary. I look forward to easing into Monday with some of these wonderful resources.
I just think Carter is one of the most important writers in English of the 20th century. And she’s just marvellous!