Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt is a richly layered, Booker Prize-winning novel that intertwines literary scholarship, Victorian poetry, and a modern-day academic detective story. The narrative alternates between two timelines:
- 1980s England: Roland Michell, a disenchanted research assistant, uncovers secret love letters between Randolph Henry Ash, a celebrated Victorian poet (fictional, inspired by Robert Browning), and Christabel LaMotte, a lesser-known lesbian poet (reminiscent of Emily Dickinson). Teaming up with Maud Bailey, a frosty LaMotte scholar, Roland races against rival academics to piece together the clandestine affair.
- The 1850s: Byatt reconstructs Ash and LaMotte’s forbidden romance through their lush, faux-Victorian poems, diaries, and letters, revealing a relationship that defied societal constraints and altered both their lives.
Byatt’s virtuosic pastiche of Victorian verse and her exploration of obsession—both scholarly and romantic—elevate Possession into a meditation on the power of language and the ghosts of the past. The novel’s climax, set in a graveyard, unveils a secret that reshapes literary history.
For fans of: The Shadow of the Wind (Zafón), The Weight of Ink (Kadish), or The Marriage Portrait (O’Farrell).