*Now a six-part TV series starring Natalie Dormer, from Amazon Prime*
A 50th-anniversary edition of the landmark novel about three “gone girls” that inspired the acclaimed 1975 film, featuring a foreword by Maile Meloy, author of Do Not Become Alarmed
It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .
Mysterious and subtly erotic, Picnic at Hanging Rock inspired the iconic 1975 film of the same name by Peter Weir. A beguiling landmark of Australian literature, it stands with Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides as a masterpiece of intrigue.
“In the seemingly limitless pantheon of gone-girl literature, Picnic at Hanging Rock might take the prize for best setting. . . . It’s a proto-Virgin Suicides, dreamy and haunting, animated by a sense of slightly sickening erotic mystery.” —The New Yorker
“[This] cult novel—the first in a thriving genre of ‘gone girls’—continues to beguile . . . and will continue to haunt readers for generations to come.” —The Economist
“Pure magic. Every fashion film and NYU undergraduate thesis takes its cues from this lyrical masterpiece. In college I tried to make a satirical remake entitled Lunchtime at Dangling Boulder, but all my actors slept too late.” —Lena Dunham, on the film adaptation
“[From the] Victorian hothouse atmosphere and fetishism . . . and its focus on the burgeoning sexual curiosity of the girls (and the women) . . . to Gothic terrors, supernatural wonder, divine mysticism, or the imperialist unconscious . . . Picnic actively encourages a host of fantasies.” —Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me, The Fever, and Dare Me, in an essay for The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray/DVD edition of the film
“A sinister tale . . . laced with touches of other-worldliness” —The Guardian
“Deliciously horrific.” —The Observer
“The fact that most people believed that this palpable fiction was a record of a real event is not merely a tribute to the writer . . . but a testimony to the atavistic power of its theme.” —The Spectator
“Beautifully haunting.” —The Sun Herald (Australia)
