Angela Carter

Nights at the Circus

£65

Illustrated By Eileen Cooper

Introduced By Sarah Waters

Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter’s tale of love and magic, circuses and lies, receives its first illustrated Folio Society edition. Royal Academician Eileen Cooper provides extraordinary linocut images, Sarah Waters introduces.

Nights at the Circus

£65
Book Details
 
Presentation Box & BindingBound in printed and blocked cloth
Gold slipcase
Dimensions9½ inches x 6¼ inches
FontSet in Laurentian
Pages376 pages
AuthorAngela Carter
Illustrated ByEileen Cooper
Illustration9 colour and 13 black & white integrated illustrations
Publication Date01/03/2021
Editor's Notes
 
Nights at the Circus tells the story of Sophie Fevvers, half woman, half swan, all super star, and journalist Jack Walser’s quest to find the truth behind her unlikely legend. Stuffed to the gills with Angela Carter’s wildly original storytelling, gorgeously slippery language, and all the pleasures and horrors of a fairy tale, this first illustrated edition features nine exclusive colour illustrations and a set of black-and-white chapter headings by celebrated printmaker Eileen Cooper. A Royal Academician, Cooper has credited fairy tales, mythology and the female figure as core inspirations for her work, making her the perfect artist to bring Carter’s lush imagery to life. Sarah Waters’s novel Tipping the Velvet trod the same theatrical boards as Nights at the Circus, and here she provides an introduction celebrating Carter’s ‘masterpiece’ and the author’s unique power to ‘unsettle as well as to inspire and console’. This is a sensational edition of one of the 20th century’s greatest literary spectacles.

About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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About the Illustrator

Ellen Cooper

Eileen Cooper was born in Glossop, in the Peak District, in 1953. She studied first at Goldsmiths College (1971–4) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974–7) and went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000 she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010–17 Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in many public and private collections such as the British Museum, the Royal Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Yale University, USA. Cooper was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016.

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Angela Carter (1940–92) read English at Bristol University and was a fellow in Creative Writing at Sheffield University in 1976–8. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by The Magic Toyshop (1967, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and The Passion of New Eve (1977), among others. Nights at the Circus won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She also published several collections of short stories, beginning with Fireworks (1974), as well as The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979), and two collections of journalism, Nothing Sacred (1982) and Expletives Deleted (1992). Her short story collection, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was published by The Folio Society in 2011, and one of the stories, ’The Company of Wolves’, became an award-winning film directed by Neil Jordan.

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has written six novels, including Tipping the Velvet (1998), which won the Betty Trask Award, and Fingersmith (2002), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, and won the South Bank Show Award for Literature and the CWA Historical Dagger; both of these novels were later adapted into multi-award-winning series by the BBC. She co-wrote with Christopher Green a stage adaptation of the lost 1928 supernatural murder-mystery novel The Frozen Scream, which premiered in December 2014.