The Testaments

By Margaret Atwood

Limited edition, number 84 of 100 copies signed by the author: London: Chatto & Windus, 2019.

Swiss-bound in neon-green cloth, screen-printed in white to both boards, the author’s name and title debossed on the upper board; navy endpapers, the front pastedown printed with a white arc continuing the design of the upper board; edges sprayed green. The limitation leaf numbered in black ink and signed by Atwood in blue. Housed in the publisher’s navy cloth clamshell box with magnetic catch, the lid blind-stamped “Cardinal Newman / Apologia Pro Vita Sua”, lined with hand-marbled paper by Jemma Lewis in green, navy and white, with ribbon pulls.

A fine copy, the boards square and the corners sharp, with very faint evidence of green colour transfer to the top corner of the white area of the upper board.

The box fine, square and unmarked, the marbled lining fresh.

Atwood’s sequel to "The Handmaid’s Tale", and joint winner, with Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, of the 2019 Booker Prize. The lettering on the box is taken from the novel: Aunt Lydia keeps her secret account of Gilead hidden in a hollowed-out copy of Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua in the library at Ardua Hall. The marbled papers lining the boxes were made in batches of twenty-five to each design.