After graduating from Bristol University, Angela Carter enrolled in evening classes at the West of England College of Art at the RWA, the very same building where the Strange Worlds: The Vision of Angela Carter exhibition is being held, 25 years after her death. Its imposing majestic splendour was familiar to Carter and it is where she actually produced some of her own works of art. She would have walked the galleries, little dreaming that one day they would be filled with art-works celebrating her unique literary vision. It is ironic that she was rejected as an applicant for the full-time course because she was not sufficiently single-minded about art as writing was clearly her vocation, and that now she is the focal point of the first exhibition to be held at the RWA on a writer and also on a woman.


IMAGE: © Angela Carter / Painting / original artwork used as book cover for Jenny Uglow (ed). Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories (Chatto & Windus, 1995) (jacket design Andrea Purdie).