The Magic Toyshop: Virago Modern Classics

The boldest of English women writers
Her writing is pyrotechnic - fuelled with ideas, packed with images and spangling the night sky with her starry language
She can glide from ancient to modern, from darkness to luminosity, from depravity to comedy without any hint of strain and without losing the elusive power of the original tales
Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes-from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch . . . It leaves behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling
'She was, among other things, a quirky, original, and baroque stylist . . . her vocabulary a mix of finely tuned phrase, luscious adjective, witty aphorism, and hearty, up-theirs vulgarity' Margaret Atwood, Observer

'Angela Carter was a great writer . . . a real one-off, nothing like her on the planet' Salman Rushdie