This page is devoted to the study of A. S. Byatt's 1990 novel Possession. It contains a brief biography of the author, links to related web sites, a bibliography of works by Byatt as well as critical studies of the novel, annotations for Possession, and essays dealing with it. To navigate through this site, just click on the buttons in the left-hand column.
The annotations page is keyed to the U.S. editions of Possession (New York: Random House, 1990; Vintage, 1993). The annotations were a class project for English 256, a graduate seminar in twentieth-century British literature, at San Jose State University during Spring, 1997. Students participating include Jennifer Apodaca, Clare Bornstein, Mark Burgeles, Stephen Dondershine, Jason Edwards, Homeira Foth, Brooke Hermann, Kimberlie Joyner, and Matthew Tamel.
If you have any comments, corrections, criticisms, or contributions, please e-mail the instructor, D. Mesher.
A. S. Byatt was born Antonia Susan Drabble on August 24, 1936, in Sheffield, England. She earned a BA at Cambridge University in 1957, then was a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College, in the Pennsylvania, for one year (1957-8), and at Oxford for a second (1958-9), before marrying Ian Charles Rayner Byatt in 1959; they were divorced in 1969 and she married Peter John Duffy later that year. Byatt began teaching in London in the 1960s, becoming a regular faculty member in the English department at University College, London, in 1972, and leaving there as a senior lecturer in 1983 to pursue a full-time writing career.
In addition to her six novels and four volumes of shorter fictions, Byatt has published a wide range of essays, criticism, interviews, and other writings. She has contributed prefaces to editions of women writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Grace Paley, and Willa Cather, and she has also edited several classic Victorian texts, such as George Eliot's Mill on the Floss and Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues; the latter--of particular interest, perhaps, for the study of Possession--appeared, not coincidentally, in 1990.
Byatt became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. In 1985, she received the Silver Pen Award for her novel Still Life, and in 1990 Possession won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary award.
Angels and Insects. Chatto & Windus, 1992. New York: Random House, 1992. Two novellas.
Babel Tower. New York: Random House, 1996. Novel.
Degrees of Freedom: The Novels of Iris Murdoch. London: Chatto and Windus, 1965. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965. Criticism.
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye : Five Fairy Stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1994. New York: Random House, 1997. Stories.
The Game. Chatto & Windus, 1967. New York: Scribner, 1968. Novel.
Iris Murdoch. Harlow, England: British Council/Longman Group, 1976. Criticism.
The Matisse Stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993. New York: Random House, 1995. Stories.
Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings. Chatto and Windus, 1991. New York: Turtle Bay, 1992. Essays.
Possession. Chatto & Windus, 1990. New York: Random House, 1990. Novel.
Shadow of a Sun. London, 1964. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993. Novel. (U.S. title is Shadow of the Sun.)
Still Life. London: Chatto and Windus/Hogarth Press, 1985. New York: Scribner, 1985. Novel.
Sugar and Other Stories. London: Chatto and Windus, 1987. New York: Scribner, 1987. Stories.
The Virgin in the Garden. London: Chatto and Windus, 1978. New York: Knopf, 1979. Novel.
Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time. London: Nelson, 1970. New York: Crane, Russak, 1973. Criticism. (Reissued as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Times. London: Hogarth Press, 1989.)
A. S. Byatt and Ignes Sodre. Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers. London: chatto and Windus, 1995. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. (U.S. subtitle omits the word "Six.")
Ashworth, Ann. "Fairy Tales in A. S. Byatt's Possession." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 15.1-2 (1994): 93-4.
Bronfen, Elisabeth. "Romancing Difference, Courting Coherence: A. S. Byatt's Possession as Postmodern Moral Fiction." Why Literature Matters: Theories and Functions of Literature. Ed. Rudiger Ahrens and Laurenz Volkmann. Heidelberg, Germany: Anglistische Forschungen, 1996. 117-34
Buxton, Jackie. "'What's Love Got to Do with It?': Postmodernism and Possession." English Studies in Canada 22.2 (1996): 199-219.
Chevalier, Jean Louis. "Conclusion in Possession by Antonia Byatt." Fins de romans: Aspects de la conclusion dans la litterature anglaise. Ed. Lucien Le Bouille. Caen : PU de Caen, 1993. 109-31.
Clutterbuck, Charlotte. "A Shared Depository of Wisdom: Connection and Redemption in Tiger in the Tiger Pit and Possession." Southerly 53.2 (1993): 121-9
Fountain, J. Stephen. "Ashes to Ashes: Kristeva's Jouissance, Altizer's Apocalypse, Byatt's Possession and 'The Dream of the Rood.'" Literature and Theology 8.2 (1994): 193-208.
Giobbi, Giuliana. "Sisters Beware of Sisters: Sisterhood As a Literary Motif in Jane Austin, A.S. Byatt and I. Bossi Fedrigotti. Journal of European Studies 22 (Sep 1992): 32-41
Giobbi, Giuliana. "Know the Past: Know Thyself. Literary Pursuits and Quest for Identity in A. S. Byatt's Possession and in F. Duranti's Effetti Personali." Journal of European Studies. 24 (Mar 1994): 41-54.
Holmes, Frederick M. "The Historical Imagination and the Victorian Past: A. S. Byatt's Possession." English Studies in Canada 20.3 (1994): 319-34.
Hotho Jackson, Sabine. "Literary History in Literature: An Aspect of the Contemporary Novel." Moderna Sprak 86.2 (1992): 113-9.
Hulbert, Ann. "The Great Ventriloquist: A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance." Contemporary British Women Writers: Narrative Strategies. Ed. Robert E Hosmer, Jr. New York: St. Martin's, 1993. 55-65.
Lund, Mark F. "Lindsay Clarke and A. S. Byatt: The Novel on the Threshold of Romance." Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal 2 (1993): 151-59.
Sanchez, Victoria. "A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Fairytale Romance." Southern Folklore 51.1 (1995): 33-52.
Shinn, Thelma J. "'What's in a Word?' Possessing A. S. Byatt's Meronymic Novel.'" Papers on Language and Literature 31.2 (1995): 164-83.
Todd, Richard. "The Retrieval of Unheard Voices in British Postmodernist Fiction: A. S. Byatt and Marina Warner." Liminal Postmodernisms: The Postmodern, the (Post-)Colonial, and the (Post-)Feminist. Ed. Theo D'haen and Hans Bertens. Amsterdam : Rodopi, 1994. 99-114.
Vache, Jean. "Fiction romanesque et poesie fictive dans Possession de A. S. Byatt." Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines 1 (Dec 1992): 73-81.
Webb, Caroline. "History through Metaphor: Woolf's Orlando and Byatt's Possession: A Romance." Virginia Woolf: Emerging Perspectives. Ed. Mark Hussey and Vara Neverow. New York : Pace UP, 1994. 182-88.
Yelin, Louise. "Cultural Cartography: A. S. Byatt's Possession and the Politics of Victorian Studies." Victorian Newsletter 81 (Spring 1992): 38-41.