Alias Grace (62 page)

I would also like to thank Aileen Christianson, of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Ali Lumsden, who helped to track down Thomas Kinnear’s origins.

In addition to materials in the archives cited above, I consulted the newspapers of the time, most especially the
Star and Transcript
(Toronto), the
Chronicle and Gazette
(Kingston),
The Caledonian Mercury
(Edinburgh, Scotland),
The Times
(London, England), the
British Colonist
(Toronto),
The Examiner
(Toronto), the
Toronto Mirror
, and
The Rochester Democrat
.

I found many books helpful, but most especially: Susanna Moodie,
Life in the Clearings
(1853, reprinted by Macmillan, 1959); and
Letters of a Lifetime
, edited by Ballstadt, Hopkins, and Peterman, University of Toronto Press, 1985; Chapter IV, Anonymous, in
History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario
, Volume 1, Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1885;
Beeton’s Book of Household Management
, 1859-61, reprinted by Chancellor Press in 1994; Jacalyn Duffin,
Langstaff: A Nineteenth-Century Medical Life
, University of Toronto Press, 1993; Ruth McKendry,
Quilts and Other Bed Coverings in the Canadian Tradition
, Key Porter Books, 1979; Mary Conway,
300 Years of Canadian Quilts
, Griffin House, 1976; Marilyn L. Walker,
Ontario’s Heritage Quilts
, Stoddart, 1992; Osborne and Swainson,
Kingston: Building on the Past
, Butternut Press, 1988; K. B. Brett,
Women’s Costume in Early Ontario
, Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto, 1966;
Essays in the History of Canadian Medicine
, edited by Mitchinson and McGinnis, McClelland & Stewart, 1988; Jeanne Minhinnick,
At Home in Upper Canada
, Clarke, Irwin, 1970; Marion Macrae and Anthony Adamson,
The Ancestral Roof
, Clarke, Irwin, 1963;
The City and the Asylum
, Museum of Mental Health Services, Toronto, 1993; Henri F. Ellenberger,
The Discovery of the Unconscious
, Harper Collins, 1970; Ian Hacking,
Rewriting the Soul
, Princeton University Press, 1995; Adam Crabtree,
From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing
, Yale University Press, 1993; and Ruth Brandon,
The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
, Knopf, 1983.

The story of the Kinnear murders has been fictionalized twice before: as
A Master Killing
, by Ronald Hambleton (1978), which concerns itself mainly with the pursuit of the suspects; and by Margaret Atwood, in the
CBC
television play
The Servant Girl
(1974, directed by George Jonas), which relied exclusively on the Moodie version and cannot now be taken as definitive.

Finally, I would like to thank my chief researcher, Ruth Atwood, and Erica Heron, who copied the quilt patterns; my invaluable assistant, Sarah Cooper; Ramsay Cook, Eleanor Cook, and Rosalie Abella, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions; my agents, Phoebe Larmore and Vivienne Schuster, and my editors, Ellen Seligman, Nan A. Talese, and Liz Calder; Marly Rusoff, Becky Shaw, Jeanette Kong, Tania Charzewski, and Heather Sangster; Jay Macpherson and Jerome H. Buckley, who taught me an appreciation of nineteenth-century literature; Michael Bradley, Alison Parker, Arthur Gelgoot, Gene Goldberg, and Bob Clark; Dr. George Poulakakis, John and Christiane O’Keeffe, Joseph Wetmore, Black Creek Pioneer Village, and Annex Books; and Rose Tornato.

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec and Ontario, and later in Toronto. She has lived in a number of cities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

Atwood is the author of more than forty books – novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and books for children. Her work is acclaimed internationally and has been published around the world. Her novels include
The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake
, and, most recently,
The Year of the Flood
. She has received many prestigious awards, including the Giller Prize (Canada), the Booker Prize (U.K.), the Premio Mondello (Italy), the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (U.S.), Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), and the Prince of Asturias Award (Spain).

Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson. She is a Vice President of International PEN. She and Gibson are the Joint Honorary Presidents of the Rare Bird Club within Birdlife International, and spend much time on conservation projects. For more information, please visit
www.margaretatwood.ca
.