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 miscellaneous figures, the rare variant with the purple illustrated rear endpapers with fruit branded with character's names; pp. [vi], 234; fine.
First edition, the preferable binding variant with the beautifully illustrated endpapers.
"How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and daughters, never mothers and daughters"- Ellen Terry
Wise Children, Carter’s swan song, details the lives and destinies of twin chorus girls, Dora and Nora Chance. A spellbinding journey that takes us from Broadway in the 1980s to London in 1915, it is an exquisitely original celebration of both the mythology and enchantment of showbiz, from Shakespeare to cinema, Hollywood to Vaudeville. After her death, Salman Rushdie described Carter, his friend, as a "fairy queen”, adding that “English literature has lost its high sorceress, its benevolent white witch”.
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