Possession

“Dazzling, virtuosic … as substantial and impressive a storytelling achievement as the ample heritage of the eminent Victorians themselves.”

—Boston Globe

“Brilliant … A novel like
Possession
, which is both a mystery and a love story, and is also reassuringly complex and allusive, is a rarity … [a] feat of human ingenuity.”

—Diane Johnson,
The New York Review of Books

“More heartfelt and 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.… What is finest in
Possession
is what the artist illuminates about those, including herself, who love the word.”

—Judith Thurman,
The New Yorker

“Utterly convincing … 
Possession
is as solid and entertaining a novel as has been seen in years.”

—Newsweek

“A. S. Byatt takes the passion and psyche-searching of a 19th century novel and molds it into a detective story to create a literary thriller.… A work of reflecting mirrors and twisting intrigues. Byatt’s sometimes biting prose … becomes a page-turning flood of emotion.”

—New York Newsday

“An exhilarating, virtuosic exploration of the many ways language has of speaking … [Byatt] ingeniously juxtaposes the previous century with the hothouse world of the contemporary academy [and] puts all her linguistic and parodic skills on display … [a] tour de force.”

—New Republic

“An altogether convincing literary romance … as lushly sensuous in detail as a pre-Raphaelite painting yet wonderfully entertaining.”

—Joyce Carol Oates,
Vogue

“[A] wonderfully two-tiered mystery of letters, the most craftily constructed conjunction of Victorian and modern styles since
The French Lieutenant’s Woman …
[Byatt’s] elaborate creations of poetry, correspondence, and journals in Victorian style are vivid.… You will be transfixed.”

—People

“[A] gigantic treasure hunt of a literary novel.”

—Village Voice Literary Supplement

“Brilliant … [a] dazzling treasure-trove of a novel … witty, intricate, appealing [with] one of the giddiest, most satisfying plot resolutions of the year.”

—Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

F
IRST
V
INTAGE
I
NTERNATIONAL
E
DITION
, O
CTOBER
1991

Copyright
© 1990
by A. S. Byatt

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Chatto and Windus, Limited, London, in 1990. First published in the United States by Random House, New York, in 1990.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Cooperativa Utopia:
Excerpt from “Melusina, Malia e Fobia del Femminile” by Silvia Vegetti Finzi, from
Melusina, Mito e Leggende di una Donna Serpente
, Rome: Utopia, 1986. Reprinted by permission.
W. W. Norton and Editions du Seuil:
Excerpts from
Ecrits
by Jacques Lacan, translated by Alan Sheridan. Published in the United States by W. W. Norton and Company. Reprinted by permission of Editions du Seuil for the estate of Jacques Lacan and W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
The Hogarth Press, Sigmund Freud Copyrights and The Institute of Psychoanalysis:
Excerpts from “An Outline of Psychoanalysis” and “Totem and Taboo,” by Sigmund Freud, from the
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
, translated and edited by James Strachey. Reprinted by permission.
Macmillan Publishing Company:
Excerpt from “For Anne Gregory,” from
The Poems of W.B. Yeats: A New Edition
, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Company. Copyright renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission.
Oxford University Press:
Excerpt from “She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep” and “Sick Love,” from
Collected Poems 1975
, by Robert Graves.
Copyright © 1975 by Robert Graves. Reprinted by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan), 1936–
Possession : a romance / A. S. Byatt.—1st Vintage International ed.
p.      cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-81956-7
I. Title.
PR6052.Y2P6    1991
823′.914—dc20             91-50023

v3.1

For Isobel Armstrong

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Postscript 1868

About the Author

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former—while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation.… The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us.

—N
ATHANIEL
H
AWTHORNE
Preface to
The House of the Seven Gables

And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,

Seem nigh on bursting,—if you nearly see

The real world through the false,—what
do
you see?

Is the old so ruined? You find you’re in a flock

O’ the youthful, earnest, passionate—genius, beauty,

Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:

And all depose their natural rights, hail you,

(That’s me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,

Participate in Sludgehood—nay, grow mine,

I veritably possess them—…

And all this might be, may be, and with good help

Of a little lying shall be: so Sludge lies!

Why, he’s at worst your poet who sings how Greeks

That never were, in Troy which never was,

Did this or the other impossible great thing!…

But why do I mount to poets? Take plain prose—

Dealers in common sense, set these at work,

What can they do without their helpful lies?

Each states the law and fact and face o’ the thing

Just as he’d have them, finds what he thinks fit,

Is blind to what missuits him, just records

What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest.

It’s a History of the World, the Lizard Age,

The Early Indians, the Old Country War,

Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please.

All as the author wants it. Such a scribe

You pay and praise for putting life in stones,

Fire into fog, making the past your world.

There’s plenty of ‘How did you contrive to grasp

The thread which led you through this labyrinth?

How build such solid fabric out of air?

How on so slight foundation found this tale,

Biography, narrative?’ or, in other words,

‘How many lies did it require to make

The portly truth you here present us with?’

—Robert Browning
from “Mr Sludge, ‘the Medium’ ”