SOURCE: Peach, Linden. “Pain and Exclusion: The Magic Toyshop (1967) and Heroes and Villains (1969).” In Angela Carter, pp. 71-98. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Peach examines similarities between The Magic Toyshop and Heroes and Villains.

I

As I pointed out at the beginning of the previous chapter, The Magic Toyshop (1967) and Heroes and Villains (1969) were Carter's second and fourth novels respectively. In some respects, they recall the Bristol trilogy. For example, Lorna Sage (1994b) has pointed out that Heroes and Villains mocks the cultural landscape of the 1960s such as the glamour of underground, countercultural movements; the siege of university campuses; the rebirth of dandyism; and the power acquired by intellectual gurus such as Timothy Leary who is parodied in Donally (p. 18). However, they are different from the other novels written in the 1960s in ways which anticipate the later fiction. Indeed, both novels may...