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The landmark collaboration of two pre-eminent Canadian artists in an attractive, affordable format. As fledgling artists in their respective fields, Margaret Atwood and Charles Pachter were enthusiastic collaborators in a unique art form, the livre d'artiste � the marriage of original graphic work with literary text. Beginning in the mid-sixties, while both were still students, they worked together on five limited-edition handmade books, volumes of Atwood�s poetry with Pachter�s interpretive artwork. The culmination of their collaboration, the work that is considered their masterpiece, is The Journals of Susanna Moodie. In her reading of Susanna Moodie�s chronicles of pioneer life in nineteenth-century Canada, Atwood found the haunting and timeless themes that still obsess us. The poems of The Journals of Susanna Moodie were first published in 1970 in a standard format. This sequence of poems is regarded as a classic, in addition to being connected with her later novel, Alias Grace. In 1980, Pachter was able to add his own vibrant, evocative images and create the version they had dreamt of: a hand-set, hand-printed illustrated limited edition of 120 numbered copies. This popular edition is a faithful re-creation of the original, accompanied by an introductory memoir by Pachter, describing his friendship with Atwood and the creative process behind this breathtaking work, and a foreword by David Staines, who pays homage to Atwood, Pachter, and Moodie and their central places in our art and literature. (less)

The landmark collaboration of two pre-eminent Canadian artists in an attractive, affordable format. As fledgling artists in their respective fields, Margaret Atwood and Charles Pachter were enthusiastic collaborators in a unique art (…more)