Burning Your Boats. The Collected Short Stories

A complete collection of short stories by the late author of Fireworks draws on the realms of cinema, art, and the subconscious, reinventing such characters from fiction and folklore as Alice in Wonderland, Lizzie Borden, Mary Magdalen, and Beauty and the Beast. From early reflections on jazz and Japan, through vigorous refashionings of vampires and werewolves, to stunning snapshots of reallife outcasts and the glorious but tainted world of "the rich and famous," this complete collection of Angela Carter's short stories gathers together four published books -- Fireworks, The Bloody Chamber, Black Venus, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders -- with her early work and uncollected stories. Angela Carter's major preoccupations -- violence in the wild and at home; fairy stories, ancient and new; magic, fabulous and quotidian; the frailty and mystery of the flesh and the strength of the spirit -- are all examined in startling relief. Among the treasures of this masterly collection: a young Lizzie Borden visits the circus; a pianist makes a Faustian pact in a flyblown Southern brothel; an earnest student is taken on a gothic ride through the ambiguous residue of Hollywood's golden age; Alice is transmuted by a crazed fruit-grower in Prague; and Mary Magdalene steps out of Renaissance canvases, transfigured by wilderness and solitude. Acclaimed as "the poet of the short story," ANGELA CARTER (1940-1992) lived in England, the United States (she taught widely on both coasts),Japan, and Australia. "Her imagination was one of the most dazzling of this century," wrote Marina Warner when Angela Carter died at age fifty-one. And said Salman Rushdie: "She died at the height of her powers. For writers, these are the cruelest deaths: in midsentence, so to speak. The stories in this volume are the measure of our loss. But they are also our treasure to savour and hoard. "It is Carter's genius, in this collection, to make the fable of Beauty and the Beast a metaphor for all the myriad yearnings and dangers of sexual relations. --Salman Rushdie, from the Introduction Contents: Introduction by Salman Rushdie EARLY WORK, 1962-6 1. The Man Who Loved a Double Bass (1962) 2. A Very, Very Great Lady and Her Son at Home (1965) 3. A Victorian Fable (with Glossary) (1966) FIREWORKS: NINE PROFANE PIECES, 1974 4. A Souvenir of Japan 5. The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter 6. The Loves of Lady Purple 7. The Smile of Winter 8. Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest 9. Flesh and the Mirror 10. Master 11. Reflections 12. Elegy for a Freelance THE BLOODY CHAMBER AND OTHER STORIES, 1979 13. The Bloody Chamber 14. The Courtship of Mr. Lyon 15. The Tiger's Bride 16. Puss-in-Boots 17. The Erl-King (1977) 18. The Snow Child 19. The Lady of the House of Love (1975) 20. The Werewolf (1977) 21. The Company of Wolves (1977) 22. Wolf Alice (1978) BLACK VENUS, 1985 23. Black Venus (1980) 24. The Kiss (1977) 25. Our Lady of the Massacre (1979) 26. The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe (1982) 27. Overture and Incidental Music for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1982) 28. Peter and the Wolf (1982) 29. The Kitchen Child (1979) 30. The Fall River Axe Murders (1981) AMERICAN GHOSTS AND OLD WORLD WONDERS, 1993 31. Lizzie's Tiger (1991) 32. John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" (1988) 33. Gun for the Devil 34. The Merchant of Shadows (1989) 35. The Ghost Ships 36. In Pantoland (1991) 37. Ashputtle or The Mother's Ghost (1987) 38. Alice in Prague or The Curious Room (1990) 39. Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene (1992) • essay UNCOLLECTED STORIES, 1970-81 40. The Scarlet House (1977) 41. The Snow Pavilion 42. The Quilt Maker (1981) Afterword (Fireworks) (1974)