Possession
a romance
by A. S. Byatt · first published 1890
8mentions
3recommended by
7HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
43% recommend57% neutral
Winner of England’s Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triu
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…study or work, and suffers culture shock. My mum was an art historian and studied under Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute so you can understand how "Cornish" read to me. If you haven't read "Possession" by AS Byatt, I think having enjoyed "Cornish" you would like it. A very different book but touching many similar concepts without the magical realism perhaps. (Academic rivalries, art history) I often…
on “I would like a job writing Haskell” ↗Oh that’s interesting - I’d never thought of Possession as being dark academia. But you’re right, it is. It’s certainly one of my favorite novels, on another level than The Secret History which I also enjoyed. Every time I re-read it I am impressed all over…
on “Dark Academia Grows Up” ↗…goods as handled is inestimable. People still say the Mona Lisa returned after theft is a fake and some Mafia lord has the real one in a safe, to gloat over. Perhaps that's why "glass onion" had it? "Possession" by A.S.Byatt is a fictionalisation of the problem. Beautifully written. If you were a soi-disant author, man of letters, handy with a whip, and about to be consumed by the wreckage of your prison ..…
on “Joel Warner’s “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade”” ↗I think you sometimes need to be in the right frame of mind to tackle some books, especially the more "literary" or complicated novels. "Possession" was like that. It's one of the great books I've read and perhaps the first time I saw that some authors are on a higher literary level than almost all others. Byatt was like that. Beautiful book. I also…
on “A.S. Byatt, Scholar Who Found Literary Fame with Fiction, Dies at 87” ↗I’m convinced the ending (and other parts) of Cryptonomicon were inspired by A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession, but I have no evidence to support this claim. Here’s an interesting thread with more books that share this conceit: https://ask.metafilter.com/190234/Help-me-find-novels-set-in...
on “William Gibson is a literary genius” ↗Some of the value people associate with provenance comes from the mystery Ave human drama involved in establishing a provenance chain. (Think of Byatt’s Possession or the way a scholarly dispute raises the profile of a work of art.) Any digital record really drains the romance out of the whole process.
on “Shopify to lay off 10% of workers in broad shake-up” ↗I don't think it fits in the genre particularly? Been a while since I read it though. The bigger omission is Byatt's Possession, predating The Secret History by a couple years and I think possibly being the type specimen of what is now called dark academia.
on “Dark Academia Grows Up” ↗80. Possession – AS Byatt