Angela Carter's life was an eventful and vagrant one, including travels to Japan, Russia, America and Australia, and early success in the sixties that did not last into the seventies. But by the time of her tragically early death in 1992, Carter had become recognised as one of the most successful and original British literary figures of the twentieth century, and she has subsequently become one of the most studied authors in British universities. This book, now available in paperback, disentangles the cult of Angela Carter as 'the fairy godmother of magical realism' from her own claims to be a materialist and 'demythologiser' by placing her within the social, political and cultural context within which she worked. Drawing on Carter's own autobiographical articles, as well as her fiction, journalism, radio plays and TV programmes, Sarah Gamble examines Carter's engagement with national (particularly English) identity, class, politics and feminism, assessing the relationship between her life, her times and her art.