"The Debutante" by Leonora Carrington (1939

You can read "The Debutante" here

Very well done video and reading by reelwomen.com of "The Debutante"

Leonora Carrington- Britain's Last Surrealist Tate Shots. A wonderful beautifully done video -  (By the author of The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington, Joanna Moorhead, includes a conversation with  Carrington as well as images of her art)

Leonora Carrington A Surrealist Trip from Lancashire to Mexico. From the BBC




In observation of the 100th birth anniversary (April 6, 1917) of Leonora Carrington two collections of her short stories and a fascinating sounding biography by Joanna Moorhead, The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington are being published. Carrington was very closely associated with the Surrealist movement, both personally and artistically.  (In the long ago I visited the Museum of the Museo Nationale de Anthropologia in Mexico City where I must have seen one of her works.  Her art is on display in major museums throughout the world.) There are several good articles giving an overview of the life and work of Carrington online, the one from the BBC I linked above is a very good first resource as is our old standby, Wikipedia.

I was very happy to find I could read one of her most famous short stories "The Debutante" online.  My main purpose here is to journalize my first venture into the literary world of Leonora Carrington and to let interested readers know that some small portion of her work can be read online.



"The Debutante", Reading time for most will be under five minutes but it maybe all you can digest in 24 hours.  It is told in the first person by a teenage girl who will soon be going to a debutante ball.  Her best and perhaps only friend is a highly intelligent hyena she visits almost every day at the zoo.  She has taught him to speak French and from him (or her) she has learned the communicative system of hyenas.  She tells the hyena she hates the idea of going to the ball.  When the hyena hears about all the great food that will be served, he offers to go in her place.  I don't want to tell more of the plot of this story but it lives up to the canons of surrealism.  I loved it and look forward to learning more about her.

I suggest you first read the story then in a day or so watch the video production of the story by reelwomen.com.  It has a brief interview with Carrington and includes a good bit of her art.




I will soon post on her story, "The Fly".

Please share your experiences with Leonora Carrington with us

Mel u