Margaret Atwood’s ninth novel, Alias Grace, is set in Upper Canada in the mid-nineteenth century. It explores a sensational murder case which Atwood first read about in Susanna Moodie’s Life in the Clearings (1853). Alias Grace was highly acclaimed upon publication, achieved wide international sales, and was short-listed for the 1996 Booker Prize. It is already beginning to attract substantial attention from academic critics.
The factual basis of the story is that Grace Marks, a young servant working near Kingston in what is now Ontario, was convicted in 1843 of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper-mistress, Nancy Montgomery. While Grace’s accomplice, her fellow servant James McDermott, was hanged for his part in the murders, Grace herself was imprisoned until her Pardon in 1872. Atwood first wrote about this case in the 1970s....
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Citation: Hammill, Faye. "Alias Grace". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6784, accessed 14 December 2025.]
