A New York Times Notable Book.

One of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, criticism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents — as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales — are most penetratingly evident. This volume presents Carter's considerable legacy of short fiction, gathered from published books, and includes early and previously unpublished stories. From reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of classic folklore and fairy tales, to stunning snapshots of modern life in all its tawdry glory, we are able to chart the evolution of Carter's marvelous, magical vision.

Introduction by Salman Rushdie.

"If you were writing her literary naissance in the manner of Angela Carter, you'd have to provide a troupe of ghostly godpersons gathered round her typewriter. Oscar Wilde would be there, whispering 'Nothing succeeds like excess' and bestowing the gift of the inverstion of truisms; Sylvia Townsend Warner, with her clutch of ruthless fairies; Edgar Allan Poe, the subject of one of her more spectacular stories, although Carter wears her Rue Morgue with a difference. And Bram Stoker, and Perrault, and Sheridan LeFanu, and George MacDonald, and Mary Shelley, and perhaps even Carson McCullers and a whole gaggle of disreputable tale-telling old grannies." Margaret Atwood

"Carter's world is strange, dangerous, and beautiful." Alison Lurie, The New York Times Book Review

"An amazing plum pudding...you should not miss this book." Margaret Atwood, Toronto Globe & Mail

"A treasure chest of literary and aesthetic experience...mysterious, glamorous, beautiful." Carolyn See, The Washington Post

"Carter's ability to probe the secret places in the human psyche, where mysterious erotic longings and unacknowledged links with the unearthly lie buried, verges on the supernatural." The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Her imagination was one of the most dazzling of this century." Marina Warner

"Shortly before her death in 1992, British author Angela Carter collected these tales of cunning, magic, and myth spanning cultures from the Sudan to 'USA Hillbilly.' All are told from a feminine, though not necessarily feminist, perspective, and sorted into chapters by the common folklore themes of strong minds, black arts, beautiful people, mothers and daughters, married women, and useful stories. Each is labeled by country of origin, accompanied by brief but perceptive appendix notes taken from Carter's writings, and illustrated by folk-art woodcuts. Alert readers will spot the germs of plots that appear in the more well known stories of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Carter's attention to voice makes her collection especially suitable for read-alouds or storytelling. A solid purchase for any folklore collection." Candace Smith, BookList

"In the 1980s, (Carter) was happy and at the height of her powers. And in the 1990s, far too soon, she died and left us wanting more. What becomes ever clearer as one reads these tales...is that short fiction was a laboratory in which she remade herself over and over again....The best of the tales are interesting both for themselves and for what she learned she could do by writing them. At times the late stories can seem like exercises....On the other hand, an exercise can in the right hands become an etude – and Chopin's Etudes are not just pretty tunes, but ways of stretching the talent." Roz Kaveney, New Statesman & Society

"While her contemporaries were turning out K-Mart realism in bare-bones language, Carter was a fictional maximalist who bathed in luxurious sentences and wrote about women raised by wolves." From Bruce Barcott, Salon

"...by turns formal and outrageous, exotic and demotic, exquisite and coarse, precious and raunchy, fabulist and socialist, purple and black. Her novels are like nobody else's...but the best of her, I think, is in her stories." from the introduction by Salman Rushie

Angela Carter (1940–1992) wrote nine novels and numerous short stories, as well as nonfiction, radio plays, and the screenplay for Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves, based on her story (included in this volume). She won numerous literary awards, traveled and taught widely in the United States, and lived in London.