Alias Grace.

ATWOOD, Margaret [Erica Jong].

$600.00

Item Number: 142631

London: Bloomsbury, 1996.

First edition of Atwood’s Canadian Giller Prize-winning novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “To Erica – with thanks and many spiritual + actual handstands + hugs over the years Peggy Atwood.” The recipient, Erica Jong remains best known for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying which became famously controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. Written in the first person and narrated by its protagonist, 29-year-old American poet Isadora Wing, Fear of Flying was written in the throes of the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s and encapsulated the movement’s redefinition of female sexuality. In interviews, Jong stated: “At the time I wrote Fear of Flying, there was not a book that said women are romantic, women are intellectual, women are sexual—and brought all those things together… What [Isadora is] looking for is how to be a whole human being, a body and a mind, and that is what women were newly aware they needed in 1973.” The novel remains a feminist classic and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Andy Vella.

Atwood's ninth novel, Alias Grace fictionalizes the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada West. Although the novel is based on factual events, Atwood constructs a narrative with a fictional doctor, Simon Jordan, who researches the case. While Jordan is ostensibly conducting research into criminal behaviour, he slowly becomes personally involved in the Marks story and seeks to reconcile his perception of the mild-mannered woman he sees with the murder of which she has been convicted.