[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-514649-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":81,"doc-detail-514649-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":74,"head_meta":76,"extra_data":78,"updated_unix":80},105,"en","angela-carter-nights-at-the-circus-london","Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus - London","","A vivid opening chapter of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, set in London, introduces Fevvers, a celebrated aerialiste whose flamboyant self-mythology blurs truth and performance. Through her brash dialogue with a young reporter, the text foregrounds spectacle, urban legends, and the public obsession with whether she is fact or fiction. Sensory details—makeup rituals, costumes, and the dense air of her dressing-room—shape a tone of theatrical excess and skeptical curiosity.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/story-novel/","Story & Novel",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/angela-carter-nights-at-the-circus-london/514649/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/angela-carter-nights-at-the-circus-london/514649.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Aria","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-27","2026-10-06",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",9,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"Who is Fevvers in the opening of the story?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"Fevvers is the most famous aerialiste of the day, performing in the circus and attracting intense public fascination. She actively frames herself as both real and fictional.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"What question drives the public debate about Fevvers?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"The slogan asks whether she is fact or fiction: “Is she fact or is she fiction?” The same doubt repeats in public conversations and posters.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"Where does the opening chapter take place?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"The opening is set in London, with Fevvers welcoming the city as her homecoming and the reporter interviewing her.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},514649,1791356084,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,87,91,95,100,105,110,115,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":85,"slug":86},90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":88,"show_sort_weight":89,"slug":90},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":92,"show_sort_weight":93,"slug":94},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":96,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":97,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":101,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":112,"show_sort_weight":113,"slug":114},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":131},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":22,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},2336464648322,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/2200025388227c56fec?_k=1778556882303663488","Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (London:Vintage, 1984)  \n1  \nLONDON  \nONE  \n\"Lor' love you, sir!\" Fevvers sang out in a voice that clanged like dustbin lids. \"As to my place of birth, why, I first saw light of day right here in smoky old London, didn't I! Not billed the 'Cockney Venus', for nothing, sir, though they could just as well 'ave called me 'Helen of the High Wire', due to the unusual circumstances in which I come ashore --for I never docked via what you might call the normal channels, sir, oh, dear me, no; but, just like Helen of Troy, was hatched.  \n\"Hatched out of a bloody great egg while Bow Bells rang, as ever is!\"  \nThe blonde guffawed uproariously, slapped the marbly thigh on which her wrap fell open and flashed a pair of vast, blue, indecorous eyes at the young reporter with his open notebook and his poised pencil, as if to dare him: \"Believe it or not!\" Then she spun round on her swivelling dressing-stool--it was a plush-topped, backless piano stool, lifted from the rehearsal room--and confronted herself with a grin in the mirror as she ripped six inches of false lash from her left eyelid with an incisive gesture and a small, explosive, rasping sound.  \nFevvers, the most famous aerialiste of the day; her slogan, \"Is she fact or is she fiction?\"And she didn't let you forget it for a minute; this query, in the French language, in foot-high letters, blazed forth from a wall-size poster, souvenir of her Parisian triumphs, dominating her London dressing-room. Something hectic, something fittingly impetuous and dashing about that poster, the preposterous depiction of a young woman shooting up like a rocket, wheel in a burst of agitated sawdust towards an unseen trapeze somewhere above in the wooden heavens of the Cirque d'Hiver. The artist had chosen to depict her ascent from behind--bums aloft, you might say; up she goes, in a steatopygous perspective, shaking out about her those tremendous red and purple pinions, pinions large enough, powerful enough to bear up such a big girl as she. And she was a big girl.  \nEvidently this Helen took after her putative father, the swan, around the shoulder parts.  \nBut these notorious and much-debated wings, the source of her fame, were stowed away for the night under the soiled quilting of her baby-blue satin dressing-gown, where they made an uncomfortable-looking pair of bulges, shuddering the surface of the taut fabric from time to time as if desirous of breaking loose. (\"How does she do that?\" pondered the reporter.)  \n\"In Paris, they called me l'Ange Anglaise, the English Angel, 'not English but an angel', asthe old saint said,\" she'd told him, jerking her head at that favourite poster which, she'd remarked off-handedly, had been scrawled on the stone by \"some Frog dwarf who asked me to piddle on his thingy before he'd get his crayons so much as out sparing your blushes.\" Then-- \"a touch of sham?\" --she'd popped the cork of a chilled magnum of champagne between her teeth. A hissing flute of bubbly stood beside her own elbow on the dressing-table, the still-crepitating bottle lodged negligently in the toilet jug, packed in ice that must have come from a fishmonger's for a shiny scale or two stayed trapped within the chunks. And this twice-used ice must surely be the source of the marine aroma--something fishy about the Cockney Venus--that underlay the hot,  \nsolid composite of perfume, sweat, greasepaint and raw, leaking gas that made you feel you breathed the air in Fevvers' dressing-room in lumps.  \nOne lash off, one lash on, Fevvers leaned back a little to scan the asymmetric splendour reflected in her mirror with impersonal gratification.  \n\"And now,\" she said, \"after my conquests on the continent\" (which she pronounced,\"congtinong\") \"here's the prodigal daughter home again to London, my lovely London that I love so much. London -- as dear old Dan Leno calls it, 'a little village on the Thames of which the principal industries are the music hall and the confidence t","cbCaifAmPYQdTDuJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifAmPYQdTDuJ","pdf",1790084,175,"English","# London\n## Fevvers and the reporter","[{\"question\":\"Who is Fevvers in the opening of the story?\",\"answer\":\"Fevvers is the most famous aerialiste of the day, performing in the circus and attracting intense public fascination. She actively frames herself as both real and fictional.\"},{\"question\":\"What question drives the public debate about Fevvers?\",\"answer\":\"The slogan asks whether she is fact or fiction: “Is she fact or is she fiction?” The same doubt repeats in public conversations and posters.\"},{\"question\":\"Where does the opening chapter take place?\",\"answer\":\"The opening is set in London, with Fevvers welcoming the city as her homecoming and the reporter interviewing her.\"}]","Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus - London | PDF",1791301143,270]