"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--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


From Publishers Weekly
Two contemporary scholars, each studying one of two Victorian poets, reconstruct their subjects' secret extramarital affair through poems, journal entries, letters and modern scholarly analysis of the period. PW called this Booker Prize winner "an ambitious and wholly satisfying work, a nearly perfect novel." Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The latest novel by the author of Still Life ( LJ 11/15/85) is as sumptuous as brandy-soaked Christmas fruitcake, dense with intrigue, beguiling characters, and a double-edged romance that bridges Victorian England and modern-day academia. At once literary and highly readable, the book boasts a compelling narrative that exposes the real life behind the art of two Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, and contrasts their passion for life with that of Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, contemporary scholars who stumble upon romance hidden in dusty papers. This wonderfully written work is highly recommended.- Linda L. Rome, Mentor, OhioCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
A.S. Byatt's brilliant literary mystery won the 1990 Booker Prize. In Byatt's tour de force two contemporary literary scholars researching the works of a nineteenth-century writer discover an unusual and unconventional love story that echoes their own lives. This unabridged production narrated by Virginia Leishman brings the dusty scholarly world to life in the voices of its singular characters and the myriad styles of its literary manuscripts. E.K.D. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
Roland Mitchell, underpaid English research assistant, is on a search for nineteenth-century poet Randolph Henry Ash's copy of Vico, in the hopes that Ash will have written something enlightening in the margins. The book is brought up from the vaults of the British Museum, and in it Mitchell finds far more than Randolph Ash's thoughts on Vico. Hidden between the pages, unknown to anyone, are two rough drafts of a love letter to an unknown woman, written by Randolph Ash - a man scholars believe was eternally, faithfully married. From here on, the plot thickens, as they say, to include romance, poetry, parodies of feminist and Freudian criticism, trips to old houses and foreign countries, thefts, deceptions, and true love. Possession is a novel about literary scholarship - a hymn of praise and an attack - a book about modern romance and the lack of it. It is a novel of many voices and about the difficulty of knowing anyone's voice, even one's own. It is a magnificent read - thick and engrossing. A favorite with book clubs, this book elicits great discussions; readers either love it or hate it, but everybody has an opinion. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.


Review

"Byatt is the most formidably equipped of contemporary novelists. . . . The great merit of [her] writing . . . is that it continually engages the reader's mind."
?-The Daily Telegraph


"This cerebral extravaganza of a story zigzags with unembarrassed zest across an imaginative terrain bristling with symbolism and symmetries, shimmering with myth and legend, and haunted everywhere by presences of the past. . . . Possession is eloquent about the intense pleasures of reading. And, with sumptuous artistry, it provides a feast of them."
? The Sunday Times (London)


Book Description
Actual Book Cover May Vary -- There are two covers available and orders are filled at random.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.


From the Inside Flap
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.

ANNOTATION

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness."
        
Possession, for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession—the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject—she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics—Roland Michell and Maud Bailey—as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.
        
With an Introduction by the author that describes the novel's origins and its twenty-year gestation, this Modern Library edition is a handsome keepsake for fans of Possession—new and oldalike.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times

Gorgeously written...dazzling.

Publishers Weekly

Two contemporary scholars, each studying one of two Victorian poets, reconstruct their subjects' secret extramarital affair through poems, journal entries, letters and modern scholarly analysis of the period. Publishers Weekly called this Booker Prize-winner ``an ambitious and wholly satisfying work, a nearly perfect novel.''

Library Journal

This Booker Prize-winning novel is a good candidate for an oral reading, and Virginia Leishman performs beautifully. A wonderful mix of poetry and posturing literary criticism, part mystery, part romance, this tale is an entertaining juxtaposition of the 19th and 20th centuries. Leishman's reading emphasizes this contrast as she elegantly modulates poetry and then clips her words in a businesslike manner when reading the 20th-century analyses of 19th-century poetry. Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, scholars of Christabel Lamotte and Randolph Henry Ash, are brought together and to life through the letters, diaries, and poetry of the two poets. Uncertain of their own identities, Bailey and Mitchell can easily lose themselves in the study of literature. We become as involved as the scholars through a judicious sampling of belles lettres and literary criticism, until finally Lamotte and Ash materialize and speak for themselves. The supporting characters are humorous stereotypes that Leishman portrays with various accents and annoying drawls to match their idiosyncrasies. Highly recommended.--Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Williamsburg, VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

When A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel was made into a mediocre film, some critics argued it simply didn't work as a movie. One might also argue that it doesn't make a good audiobook. POSSESSION has a complicated structure—with poems, letters, and journal entries as well as conventional narrative—that's difficult to follow in audio, but these challenges can be overcome. The downfall of this production is that, as brilliant as POSSESSION is, many parts of the novel are eminently skippable. This is easy and guilt-free with the paperback, but impractical with a tape. And while Virginia Leishman reads dialogue well, her overall delivery is too languid, drawing out Byatt's already excessive prose. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

AudioFile - Elizabeth K. Dodge