setting aside this read at page 154 - for now. it was a re-read. this is a novel i love, but my focus and concentration are terrible at the moment, doing this story a disservice.

Booktrovert | Dec 13, 2016 |

The story isn't good enough to warrant fighting through the pretentious vocabulary. (

)

aclaybasket13 | Jul 29, 2016 |

The depth of the story is breathtaking - a plot within a plot. Byatt created new poems, stories and letters for the subplot, which is an enterprising on its own. There is a pleasant twist at the end. (

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siok | May 2, 2016 |

I was bored stiff. Byatt is simply not my cup of tea. (

)

Oodles | Feb 16, 2016 |

A love story and a story about literary sleuthing into another love story. Though I tried to read all the poems in this book, one could just as easily pretty much skip over it all and still get a lot out of the book. Don't be scared away by some of the ancient (to us) vocabulary either. The end seemed to be a bit trumped up, but overall a great read. (

)

dbsovereign | Jan 26, 2016 |

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▾Published reviews

3 reviews

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thingScore 92

This is a romance, as the subtitle suggests, but it's a romance of ideas — darkly intricate Victorian ideas and modern academic assembly-line ideas. The Victorian ideas get the better of it.

added by stephmo | editEntertainment Weekly, L.S. Klepp (Nov 30, 1990)

Shrewd, even cutting in its satire about how literary values become as obsessive as romantic love, in the end, “Possession” celebrates the variety of ways the books we possess come to possess us as readers.

added by stephmo | editChristian Science Monitor, Thomas D'Evelyn (Nov 16, 1990)

I won't be so churlish as to give away the end, but a plenitude of surprises awaits the reader of this gorgeously written novel. A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because ''Possession'' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.

added by stephmo | editNew York Times, Jay Parini (Oct 21, 1990)

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (22 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Byatt, A. S.	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Alfsen, Merete	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Alopaeus, Marja	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Baardman, Gerda	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Dugdale, Rowena	Illustrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Galuzzi, Fausto	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Johansen, Knut	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Lameris, Marian	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Lehto, Leevi	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Leishman, Virginia	Reader	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Nadotti, Anna	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Nyqvist, Sanna	Afterword	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Polvinen, Merja	Afterword	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Walz, Melanie	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Is contained in

Vintage Love: Middlemarch, Possession by George Eliot

Has the adaptation

Possession [2002 film] by Neil LaBute

Has as a student's study guide

A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) by Catherine Burgass

A.S. Byatt: Possession: A Romance, Angels & Insects, A Whistling Woman by Margaret Reynolds

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▾Common Knowledge

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, UK

Whitby, Yorkshire, England, UK

Brittany, France

England, UK

(show all 6 items)

Important events

Related movies

Possession (2002 ∙ IMDb)

Awards and honors

Booker Prize (1990)

Waterstones Books of the Century (1997, No 37)

Time's All-Time 100 Novels selection

BBC's Big Read (Best loved novel, 2003, No 129)

New York Times Best Books of the Year (1990)

(show all 18 items)

Epigraph

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former -- while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart -- has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. ... The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to The House of the Seven Gables

Dedication

For Isobel Armstrong

First words

The book was thick and black and covered with dust.

Quotations

The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. It spine was missing, or rather protruded from amongst the leaves like a bulky marker. It was bandaged about and about with dirty white tape, tied in a neat bow. … it had been exhumed from …

... the awesome Flamborough Head, where so many have met terrible deaths, in the race of water and the powerful currents - which you can almost see and hear, chuckling beneath the slap of the high waves ... The cliffs are chalky-white and carved and faceted and sliced by the elements into fantastic shapes ... One stands out to sea - raising an impotent or menacing stump -

Whitby ... a sloping town, crowding down in picturesque alleys or yards and flight after flight of stone stairs to the water - a terraced town ... The shop-fronts were old and full of romance.... There were several jewellers specialising in jet.

The Boggle Hole is a cove tucked beneath cliffs, where a beck runs down across the sand to the sea, from an old mill. They walked down through flowering lanes.... A peculiarity of that beach is the proliferation of large rounded stones which lie about ... These stones are not uniform in colour or size ...

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Oates, Joyce Carol

Johnson, Diane

Thurman, Judith

Publisher series

Vintage International

Vintage 21

Modern Library (isbn)

Everyman's Library New Series (355)

Rainbow Pocketboeken (175)

Original language

English

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

Possession (Byatt novel)

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

"Literary critics make natural detectives," says Maud Bailey, heroine of a mystery where the clues lurk in university libraries, old letters, and dusty journals. Together with Roland Michell, a fellow academic and accidental sleuth, Maud discovers a love affair between the two Victorian writers the pair has dedicated their lives to studying: Randolph Ash, a literary great long assumed to be a devoted and faithful husband, and Christabel La Motte, a lesser-known "fairy poetess" and chaste spinster. At first, Roland and Maud's discovery threatens only to alter the direction of their research, but as they unearth the truth about the long-forgotten romance, their involvement becomes increasingly urgent and personal. Desperately concealing their purpose from competing researchers, they embark on a journey that pulls each of them from solitude and loneliness, challenges the most basic assumptions they hold about themselves, and uncovers their unique entitlement to the secret of Ash and La Motte's passion.

Haiku summary

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0679735909, Paperback)

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize--the U.K.'s highest literary award--Possession is a gripping and compulsively readable novel. A.S. Byatt exquisitely renders a setting rich in detail and texture. Her lush imagery weaves together the dual worlds that appear throughout the novel--the worlds of the mind and the senses, of male and female, of darkness and light, of truth and imagination--into an enchanted and unforgettable tale of love and intrigue. --Lisa Whipple

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:17:57 -0400)

(see all 8 descriptions)

▾Library descriptions

As a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets uncover their letters, journals, & poems, & trace their movements from London to Yorkshire-and from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany-an extraordinary counterpoint of passions & ideas emerges. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets became a huge bookseller favorite, and then on to national bestellerdom. Winner of England's Booker Prize, a coast-to-coast bestseller, and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is a novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. Revolving around a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets, Byatt creates a haunting counterpoint of passion and ideas.… (more)

» see all 8 descriptions