Possession: A Romance - Hardcover

Byatt, A. S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701132604 ISBN 13: 9780701132606

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 1990

Synopsis

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, this novel describes the romance between two 19th-century poets and the parallel relationship of their two biographers and includes passages of Victorian verse. It is structured in the form of a literary and biographical treasure hunt.

About this title

Review:

"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.

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, 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

Review:

"As always, Byatt wields beautiful prose, and the mix of prose and poetry gives the book a sensuality as mysterious as anything in the plot"

"Intelligent, ingenious and humane" (Times Literary Supplement)

"A combination of intellectual fireworks and magnetic readability" (Guardian)

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0701132604
• ISBN 13: 9780701132606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 511