Autobiography of Red was warmly received by authors and critics, with highly positive reviews from Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Susan Sontag, among others.[1] The book also sold unusually well for literary poetry, with at least 25,000 copies sold by the year 2000, two years after its publication.[2] It was described as "one of the crossover classics of contemporary poetry: poetry that can seduce even people who don't like poetry"[1] and Carson herself as "that rarest of rare things, a bestselling poet."[2]
The book was referenced, alongside Carson's previous work Eros the Bittersweet, in a 2004 episode of The L Word.[2]
