SURREAL SHOWBIZ
CARTER, Angela. Wise Children. London:Chato & Windus. 1991.
8vo. Original publisher's black boards with gilt lettering to spine; Purple pictorial dust jacket depicitng two chorus girls to front cover with rear wrapper depicting an unsetlting, asbtract scene of miscellneous figures, Purple illustrated endpapers with fruit branded with character's names; pp. [vi], 234; fine.
First edition.
"How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and daughters, never mothers and daughters"- Ellen Terry
Wise Children was the last contribution from the highly innovative Angela Carter and it details the lives and destinies of twin chorus girls, Dora and Nora Chance, 'The Lucky Chances', as well as the antics of the the two absurd theatrical families, the Hazards and the Chances. It is a spellbinding journey that takes us from Broadway in the 1980s to London in 1915 and is an intensely original celebation of both the mythology and enchatnment of showbiz, spanning from Shakespeare to cinema, the culture of Hollywood to Vaudeville.
Angela Carter was one of the most prominent female voices in postwar British fiction, toying with the surreal in a climate of more "subdued" liteature and championed by the likes of feminist pubishing house Virago, whose founder, Carmen Callil, was a passionate supporter. As she wrote Wise Children she was battling lung cancer and would tragically die a year subsequent.
Aftr her passing, in the New York Times, Salman Rushdie would christen her a literary "fairy queen”, adding that “English literature has lost its high sorceress, its benevolent white witch”.
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