Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Atwood
Standard Name: Atwood, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Eleanor Atwood
Nickname: Peggy Atwood
Indexed Name: M. E. Atwood
Well before the end of the twentieth century MA
had become one of Canada's leading writers in multiple genres. She now writes for a global audience who read her more than forty novels , poetry,short stories, criticism, lectures, editing of anthologies, and experiments with new, mixed, and digital genres.
AS
accepted the label confessional poet, although many commentators made that a basis from which to denigrate her work. Erica Jong
argued that this label downplays the element of achieved skill, wrongly suggesting that...
Literary responses
Hilary Mantel
Margaret Atwood
(who confessed to a weakness for HM
) wrote that the character of Cromwell matches her particular strengths and praised the exercise here of her talent for intricacy and literary invention.
Atwood, Margaret. “Here comes a chopper . . ”. The Guardian, p. Review 6.
Review 6
Literary responses
Marina Warner
Many enthusiastic reviews followed the book's publication. Margaret Atwood
, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review found it crammed full of goodies . . . and profusely illustrated, as well as simply essential reading...
Literary responses
Germaine Greer
A number of reviewers took this book to be misogynistic because of its unsparing estimate of women's failures to realising their potential. Other commentators (fellow-writer Margaret Atwood
, for instance) have cited it with respect...
Literary responses
Toni Morrison
TM
won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. Black writers and critics had protested when it did not receive a National Book Award.
Cooke, Rachel. “America is going backwards”. The Observer, p. 15.
15
Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson-Weems. Toni Morrison. Twayne.
xiv
She said of this novel, I am not interested in...
Literary responses
Naomi Alderman
Reviewer Sarah Ditum
concluded: The slide from tweaked normality to plausible horror is realised here as perfectly as in the best of John Wyndham
or Margaret Atwood in a version of the future [that] detonates...
Literary responses
Susan Hill
Margaret Atwood
in the New York Times Book Review called this work less a novel than the portrait of an emotion,
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
and likened it to a handmade quilt, as an intricate, carefully worked celebration of...
Literary responses
Carol Shields
The back cover of the Vintage Canada edition of 1995 quoted Margaret Atwood
calling this [o]ne of the best novels I have read . . . deft, funny, poignant, and surprising and beautifully shaped.
Shields, Carol. Swann: A Mystery. Vintage Canada.
back cover
Literary responses
Tillie Olsen
Margaret Atwood
praised the message but faulted the scrapbook form (as did other commentators, too). Joyce Carol Oates
in the New Republic criticised the book for inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
Reid, Panthea. Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles. Rutgers University Press.
279
Book Review Index. Gale Research.
4 (1969-1979): 355
Pearlman, Mickey, and Abby H. P. Werlock. Tillie Olsen. Twayne.
143
Literary responses
George Orwell
Animal Farm was and is extremely successful. It sold half a million copies in its first month, thanks to the American Book-of-the-Month Club
,
Meyers, Jeffrey. A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell. Littlefield, Adams.
41-2
and has been translated into every major language, including some...
Literary responses
Carol Shields
According to Margaret Atwood
, Unless was shortlisted for just about every major English-language prize, but Shields had reached such eminence that she now inhabited the stratosphere, far beyond the ken of juries.
Atwood, Margaret. “To the light house”. The Guardian, p. 28.
28
English...
Literary responses
Carol Shields
CS
held the Order of Canada and the Order of Manitoba, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
.
Clark, Alex. “Carol Shields”. The Guardian, p. 23.
23
After she died, Margaret Atwood
identified her forte as the extraordinariness of ordinary people.
Atwood, Margaret. “To the light house”. The Guardian, p. 28.
28
Literary responses
Hilary Mantel
David Coward
, reviewing the book for the Times Literary Supplement, commended HM
's bravura display of her endlessly inventive, eerily observant style. He praised her prose, maintaining that Words are the real heroes...
Leisure and Society
Naomi Alderman
In spring 2011 NA
took a course in running which provided the inspiration for the smartphone game Zombies, Run!
Chatfield, Tom. “Escape the marauding zombies . . . and burn calories at the same time”. theguardian.com.
With Margaret Atwood
, her mentor on the Rolex scheme for partnering younger artists with distinguished...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rosalind Coward
With essays under such titles as Ideal Homes, Kissing, Naughty but Nice: Food Pornography, and Men's Bodies, Female Desire interrogates the matter-of-fact details and events of everyday life, revealing the complex...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Atwood, Margaret. The Heart Goes Last. Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2015.
Atwood, Margaret. The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Oxford University Press, 1970.
Atwood, Margaret, and Charles Pachter. The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Macfarlane, Walter, and Ross, 1997.
Atwood, Margaret, editor. The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Canongate, 2005.
Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Vintage Canada, 2006.
Atwood, Margaret. “The road to Ustopia”. Guardian Weekly, pp. 25-7.
Atwood, Margaret. The Robber Bride. McClelland and Stewart, 1993.
Atwood, Margaret. The Tent. McClelland and Stewart, 2006.
Atwood, Margaret. The Year of the Flood. McClelland and Stewart, 2009.
Atwood, Margaret. “To the light house”. The Guardian, p. 28.
Atwood, Margaret. Two-Headed Poems. Oxford University Press, 1978.
Atwood, Margaret. “Ursula K Le Guin . . . ’One of the literary greats of the 20th century’”. theguardian.com.
Atwood, Margaret. “What ’The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump”. The New York Review of Books.
Atwood, Margaret, and Naomi Alderman. “Why we’re co-writing a zombie novel”. theguardian.com.
Atwood, Margaret. Wilderness Tips. McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
