May 7, 1940

Angela Carter (May 7, 1940 to to February 16, 1992 ) the English writer, is an artist esteemed most by other artists. The author of Nights at the Circus, and many other fantasy volumes, was an early success, of course.
Her literary executor, Susaanah Clapp, author of A Card from Angela (2012), says of her, "We had met at the end of the 70s, when I was helping to set up the London Review of Books and was keen to get Angela to write for the paper."
Clapp describes:

" her house in Clapham... Downstairs was carnival: true, there was a serious kitchen, but there were also violet and marigold walls, and scarlet paintwork. A kite hung from the ceiling of the sitting room, the shelves supported menageries of wooden animals, books were piled on chairs. Birds – one of them looking like a ginger wig and called Carrot Top – were released from their cages to whirl through the air, balefully watched through the window by the household's salivating cats.

Angela Carter directed her own typical ironic jauntiness at herself, in anticipation of her early death: "The fin has come a little early this siècle."