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Summary A Level Margaret Atwood Biography
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This biography on Margaret Atwood is perfect for revising context for A Level exams on 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
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Margaret Atwood• Born on November 18th, 1939, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
• Childhood:
Her father, Carl Edmund Atwood, worked as an entomologist, studying insects in the northern
Canada wilderness. Until age eleven, Atwood would spend half the year backpacking with her
older brother while her father worked in the woods and did not attend school full time. By age
six, she had developed a passion for writing with her first book, Rhyming Cats. Throughout her
adolescence she was an avid reader and wrote for Leaside High School’s magazine, Clan Call.
After graduating in 1957, Atwood studied at Victoria College in the University of Toronto where
she published poems and articles in the college’s literary journal. In 1961, she graduated with
a Bachelor of Arts in English and later achieved a master’s degree at Radcliffe College of
Harvard University.
• Relationships:
Atwood was the middle child of the three children born to Carl Edmund Atwood, an
entomologist, and Margaret Dorothy, who was a dietician. In 1986 she married Jim Polk, but
later divorced the American writer in 1973. She then moved to a farm near Ontario with novelist
and colleague Graeme Gibson where they lived with their daughter, Eleanor Jess Atwood
Gibson, who was born in 1976. They lived together until Gibson passed away in 2019 after
suffering from dementia.
• Literary influences:
In a New York Times interview, Atwood states that “Poe was (her) earliest "influence" back in
high school, when (she) was beginning to write poetry”. Atwood has also said that she was
influenced by a number of dystopian novels when writing The Handmaid’s Tale,’ including
George Orwell’s ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. As well as
this, she has also taken inspiration from sci fi works by John Wyndham and Ray Bradbury and
from her friend and fellow poet Jay MacPherson.
• Political values/ ideologies:
Atwood has stated that she is a monarchist and has suggested in an interview that she
considers herself a Red Tory: a person who has centre to centre-right political view. She feels
strongly about environmental issues and so she is a pescatarian, honorary president of Birdlife
International’s Rare Bird Club and has supported one of Canada’s environmental reclamation
programs. Additionally, she was involved in the founding of the Canadian English-Speaking
chapter of PEN international whose original aim was to free politically imprisoned writers.
• Timeline of key events:
In 1961, Atwood won the E. J. Pratt Medal for the publication of her fist poetry book, ‘Double
Persephone’. She has since achieved a number of other awards including: the Governor
General’s Award in 1966 and the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction in 1977. She also taught at
York University in Toronto from 1971 to 1972. For her novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ which was
published in 1985, Atwood won many awards and prizes. The sequel, ‘The Testaments,’ was
later published in 2019 and won the 2019 Booker Prize.
• Authorial intent
Atwood’s writing often campaigns for human rights and the environment. She writes about the
dangers of ideology and sexual politics and seeks to “explore the nature and limits of what it
means to be human" and "explore proposed changes in social organisation" through her
speculative fiction.
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