This $760 ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Box Set Comes With Hand-Signed Artwork and a New Margaret Atwood Introduction

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The Folio Society is giving Margaret Atwood’s Gilead novels a lavish makeover.

The independent publisher is releasing a new collector’s edition box set of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Testaments,” limited to just 750 hand-signed copies and priced at $760. The set, featuring new artwork from acclaimed Italian illustrators Anna and Elena Balbusso, will be available exclusively through the Folio Society beginning Nov. 3.

Notably, the release date coincides with Election Day in the U.S., where the 2026 midterm elections will determine all 435 seats in the House and roughly one-third of the Senate.

Atwood’s dystopian novels imagine the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian society that has stripped women of fundamental rights and assigned them rigid social roles. First published in 1985, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has since become one of the author’s best-known works, while its 2019 sequel, “The Testaments,” won the Booker Prize.

For the new Folio edition, the two novels will arrive inside a clamshell presentation box designed by the Balbusso Twins, whose illustrations combine hand-drawn and painted techniques — including pencil, watercolor, gouache and tempera — with digital methods. The artists describe the visual approach to the books as a “surrealist nightmare.”

he sisters previously illustrated Folio Society’s 2012 edition of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” years before the novel was adapted into the hit Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss.

“Illustrating the 2012 edition of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was a pure lightning bolt for us,” the Balbusso Twins said in a statement, adding that returning for “The Testaments” felt like “a natural homecoming.”

Each copy of the new set will be signed by the artists. The books will be printed by Grafiche Veneziane, Venice’s oldest book printer, before being transported by gondola and bound in leather by Italian bookbinder Graphicom.

Atwood herself has contributed a new introduction to the edition, in which she discusses the visual language of Gilead and its historical influences.

“‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a very visual book,” Atwood writes. “Those who lack power always see more than they say.” She notes that the new artwork evokes “the feel and the colour palette of the thirties and forties, the age of the rise of the major dictatorships,” while also reflecting Gilead’s fixation on propaganda, presentation and slogans.

“The Power” author Naomi Alderman has also written a new foreword for the collection.

“In all the ways that fiction can be real, the Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s novels ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Testaments’ is real,” Alderman writes. “It is the name of a force trying to push itself back into the world.”

The Folio Society has previously produced deluxe editions of titles including George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones,” Madeline Miller’s “The Song of Achilles” and Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.”

“The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments” limited edition box set will be available exclusively from the Folio Society on Nov. 3 for $760.