Down Below

Product Description

Leonora Carrington is perhaps the most enchanting of the women Surrealists. Theadaughter of Anglo Irish privilege, she broke free of her manor-house upbringingaand fled, first to art school, and then to the Continent. Though she is best knownaas a painter of the gothic fantastic, with a cult following and one-woman shows atamuseums around the world, her writing is no less striking. Down Belowadescribesathe events of 1940, when, after her longtime lover, artist Max Ernst was sent toaa concentration camp, Carrington was oled across the border of Knowledgeo andaimprisoned in a sanatorium for the insane. This powerful testament, reminiscent ofaCarrington's great novel The Hearing Trumpet, ranks with the work of Sylvia Plathaand Janet Frame in its raw evocation of madness.Leonora Carrington is perhaps the most enchanting of the women Surrealists. Theadaughter of Anglo Irish privilege, she broke free of her manor-house upbringingaand fled, first to art school, and then to the Continent. Though she is best knownaas a painter of the gothic fantastic, with a cult following and one-woman shows atamuseums around the world, her writing is no less striking. Down Belowadescribesathe events of 1940, when, after her longtime lover, artist Max Ernst was sent toaa concentration camp, Carrington was oled across the border of Knowledgeo andaimprisoned in a sanatorium for the insane. This powerful testament, reminiscent ofaCarrington's great novel The Hearing Trumpet, ranks with the work of Sylvia Plathaand Janet Frame in its raw evocation of madness.
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was born in England and spent most of heraadult life in Mexico City, where she participated in the surrealist movement as anaartist, painter, and novelist. Marina Warner's studies of religion, mythology, and fairy tales include Alone ofaAll Her Sex- The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, From the Beast to the Blonde,aand No Go the Bogeyman. In 2013 she co-edited Scheherazade's Children- GlobalaEncounters with the Arabian Nights. A Fellow of the British Academy, she is alsoaa professor in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at theaUniversity of Essex.