Books in Order: A Comprehensive Guide to Margaret Atwood's Works

Margaret Atwood arrived in print as a poet first: her 1961 collection Double Persephone, long out of print, predates her debut novel by eight years. Since then the Ottawa-born Canadian — novelist, poet, and literary critic all at once — has reached readers in more than 35 countries, with speculative and dystopian fiction becoming the territory she is most identified with. She lives in Toronto; her longtime partner was the writer Graeme Gibson.

This guide concentrates on the novels: 17 of them spanning exactly fifty years, from The Edible Woman in 1969 to The Testaments in 2019. Taken in order, they trace one of the most restless and inventive careers in modern letters, reinventing itself decade after decade.