Historical fiction set in 1920s OXFORD
Little known facts about best selling author Margaret Atwood
27th September 2019
Margaret Eleanor Atwood’s father was an entomologist and her mother a dietician and nutritionist. Young Margaret spent much of her childhood in the backwoods of northern Quebec and didn’t attend school until she was 12 years old.
She became a voracious reader and realised she wanted to write professionally when she was only 16. She is a poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher, and environmental activist. Since 1961, she has published 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 books of non-fiction, eight collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, and one graphic novel.
Atwood holds more than twenty honorary degrees, including those from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Harvard, the Sorbonne and the University of Ireland in Galway. Her writing has garnered more than 50 awards in Canada and around the world, including the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000 (for The Blind Assassin).
Her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale (published in 1985) has been adapted for film, radio, television and the stage. The sequel The Testaments was published on 10th September, 2019, and is already a publishing phenomenon.
In her private life, Margaret Atwood married writer Jim Polk in 1968. They divorced in 1973. Soon after the divorce, Margaret started a relationship with author Graeme Gibson. Their daughter Eleanor Jess Atwood Gibson was born in 1976, but Graeme tragically died in London on 18th September, 2019, where Margaret has been promoting The Testaments.
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