Shaking A Leg

Angela Carter was born in 1940 and read English at Bristol University, before spending two years living in Japan. She lived and worked extensively in the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by The Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of short stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.

"Shaking a Leg reveals a stunning range of interests that marks her out not just as one of our greatest novelists and short story writers but as one of our best literary and cultural critics... If you would like better to understand the workings of the second half of our century, then this is the book" -- Ali Smith Scotsman "Reading Shaking a Leg is like sitting down with a friend who is clever, funny, outrageous, compassionate, anecdotal and sociologically aware; someone with a great memory and a quirky, associative train of thought; someone who can make you laugh and say "yes" out loud before you turn the page to devour her next paragraph, whether it be about Hollywood or Venice, her dotty parents or her favourite writers. Carter is endlessly entertaining, endearing and down-to-earth in this admirably comprehensive collection" Irish Times "It is her journalism, collected in the 1997 volume 'Shaking a Leg', to which I find myself returning again and again, struck freshly by its forthrightness, its imagination, its unpredictability - and by the sheer range of subjects on which she was fluent" -- Susannah Clapp Guardian "The range of her interests is quite dazzling. She is the voice of an entire generation" Washington Post "Shocking, willful, extravagant - every cut and quip at the same time reveals a striking intellectual acuity" New York Times