Possession - A Romance

Zusatztext “Gorgeously written ... dazzling ... a tour de force.” — The New York Times Book Review “What a book! This is a novel for every taste.... An altogether magical performance.” — The Washington Post Book World “A masterpiece of wordplay and adventure! a novel that compares with Stendhal and Joyce.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “A genuine winner ... original and unforgettable.” — Time “The most dazzling novel of the year.” — USA Today Informationen zum Autor A.S. Byatt Klappentext National Bestseller 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 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. Leseprobe Chapter One These things are there. The garden and the tree The serpent at its root, the fruit of gold The woman in the shadow of the boughs The running water and the grassy space. They are and were there. At the old world's rim, In the Hesperidean grove, the fruit Glowed golden on eternal boughs, and there The dragon Ladon crisped his jewelled crest Scraped a gold claw and sharped a silver tooth And dozed and waited through eternity Until the tricksy hero Herakles Came to his dispossession and the theft. --Randolph Henry Ash, from The Garden of Proserpina, 1861 The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, or rather protruded from amongst the leaves like a bulky marker. It was bandaged about and about with dirty white tape, tied in a neat bow. The librarian handed it to Roland Michell, who was sitting waiting for it in the Reading Room of the London Library. It had been exhumed from Locked Safe no. 5 where it usually stood between Pranks of Priapus and The Grecian Way of Love. It was ten in the morning, one day in September 1986. Roland had the small single table he liked best, behind a square pillar, with the clock over the fireplace nevertheless in full view. To his right was a high sunny window, through which you could see the high green leaves of St. James's Square. The London Library was Roland's favourite place. It was shabby but civilised, alive with history but inhabited also by living poets and thinkers who could be found squatting on the slotted metal floors of the stacks, or arguing pleasantly at the turning of the stair. Here Carlyle had come, here George Eliot had progressed through the bookshelves. Roland saw her black silk skirts, her velvet trains, sweeping compressed between the Fathers of the Church, and heard her firm foot ring on metal among the German poets. Here Randolph Henry Ash had come, cramming his elastic mind and memory with unconsidered trifles from History and Topography, from the felicitous alphabetical conjunctions of Science and Miscellaneous--Dancing, Deaf and Dumb, Death, Dentistry, Devil and Demonology, Distribution, Dogs, Domestic Servants, Dreams. In his day, works on Evolution had been catalogued under Pre-Adamite Man. Roland had only recently discovered that the London Library possessed Ash's own copy of Vico's Principj di Scienza Nuova. Ash's books were most regrettably scattered across Europe and America. By far the largest sing...

Product details

• Authors: A S Byatt, A. S. Byatt
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 01.10.1991
• EAN: 9780679735908
• ISBN: 978-0-679-73590-8
• No. of pages: 576
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 205 mm x 28 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature