Margaret Atwood

Second edition.

“Praise for the first edition: ”

'The first edition of Howells' Margaret Atwood, published in 1996, is among the most widely cited books in the vast field of Atwood criticism. It has become the standard introduction to Atwood for undergraduates and postgraduates, since the comprehensive coverage of Atwood's novels, together with the book's accessible style and coherent structure, have ensured its appeal to students. Howells' detailed and influential close readings, and her judicious selections from secondary material in the field, have made the book very valuable to postdoctoral researchers also.' - Faye Hammill, British Journal of Canadian Studies Praise for the second edition: 'This book should be recommended to all students seeking an introduction to Atwood's work and it will provide new perspectives for researchers who benefited from the first edition at an earlier stage in their careers.' - Faye Hammill, British Journal of Canadian Studies

CORAL ANN HOWELLS is Professor of English and Canadian Literature at the University of Reading, UK, and a former President of the British Association for Canadian Studies. Her previous publications include Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction: Refiguring Identities (2003), which is also published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Margaret Atwood's appeal to a wide international readership is grounded in her versatility as a writer. Through a dazzling variety of generic forms - Gothic romance, science fiction dystopias, fictive autobiographies and historical novels - she revises the conventions of fiction. This approachable introduction, by one of Britain's leading Atwood critics, offers detailed analyses of Atwood's novels from the end of the 1960s to the present. With reference to the author's poetry and critical writings, Coral Ann Howells draws out Atwood's key recurring themes of Canadian identity and the wilderness, the representation of women and female bodies, and history and its narration. Howells also explores Atwood's distinctive brand of postmodernism with its ironic mixture of artifice and moral engagement. The second edition of this insightful text has been thoroughly revised and updated and now includes new chapters covering Atwood's recent novels Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake, and refers extensively to her 2002 collection of critical essays, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Winner of the Margaret Atwood Society Best Book in 1997, this is the essential guide to one of the world's most successful contemporary authors.

This introduction covers Atwood's work from the end of the 1960s to the present, drawing out her recurring themes of Canadian identity and the wilderness, the representation of women and female bodies, and history and its narration. Winner of the Margaret Atwood Society Best Book in 1997, the second edition is thoroughly revised and updated. It includes new chapters covering Atwood's recent novels Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake, and her 2002 book on writing Negotiating with the Dead.

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