LETTERS: 3 letters to Vaill, with 2 letter from Grau to Vaill.
Letters to Her Editor
Carter, Angela. Three letters to Amanda Vaill; October 12 and November 17, 1985 and August 28, 1986.
Three letters (2 TLS and 1 ALS) from Carter to her editor at Viking, Amanda Vaill. Carter’s ALS is written on a leaf of University of Iowa letterhead, recto and verso; and the two typed letters are each written on two leaves, rectos only, of plain A1-sized paper, both containing Carter’s autograph corrections. All three letters regard her short story collection, Saints and Strangers (Viking, 1986; first published as Black Venus by Chatto and Windus in 1985).
Together with:
Grau, Shirley Ann. Typed letter signed, to Amanda Vaill; September 4, 1986. One leaf of stationery, recto only.
Shirley Ann Grau’s letter mentions some books she has read and generously compliments Carter:
And what can I say about Angela Carter? Brilliant, dazzling, words and images explode like fireworks. Ideas, concepts flicker, grow, shift into their contraries. As always I was left dazzled and fascinated. And, long after the last page, I felt a kind of lingering after-light from the violent combination of images.
In her first letter, Carter sends Vaill her contact information at the University of Iowa, adding, “Indeed, here we all are; in the middle of America, yet, in a green valley with a pond in it, where Mark & the wee boy are just this moment catching fish” (August 28).
Carter next writes to Vaill about a collection of stories that Viking has agreed to publish. She tells Vasill that’d she would like to make a few changes to the manuscript that would help make it appealing to American audiences. She explains,
I want to put the story called The Fall River Axe Murders first in the collection, and retitle the whole thing: The Fall River Axe Murders. This story, about a great U.S. folk heroine, ought to lead the collection in the States – (it was actually written in the States, too, in Providence, R.I., about ten or fifteen miles away from the scene of the crime.) The present title story, Black Venus, can go at the end of the collection, where The Fall River Axe Murders is at the moment. (October 12)
In her final letter, Carter discusses an introduction she is writing for the collection (not included here). She says that the introduction will help people understand why she chose to write the story about Lizzie Borden, expanding,
I think it works, that setting the scene in this way, in a style that is a pastiche of elegant travel-writing, reduces the sensationalism of the title, and also makes plain that what dollows is historical fiction. (Because, Borden did do it when she steadfastly denied that she did, and was found “not guilty” by a perfectly decent jury. That ought to have been the end of it, really! But I can’t resist the resonances.
Contrary to her October letter, Carter has deiced to change the title of the collection again, this time settling on Saints and Strangers.
(#13085)
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