A. S. Byatt, before and after "Possession"
Résumé
Possession: A Romance is a novel that now holds an overwhelming position in literary criticism and in A. S. Byatt's bibliography. With the award of the Booker Prize in 1990, Byatt's writing career entered a new phase indeed, as Possession received praise from critics and readers as well as attention from academics. Although unique in Byatt’s oeuvre, Possession nevertheless contains distinct Byattian traits that can be found in the rest of her production, hence our choice to reexamine Possession twenty-five years on and to look at Byatt’s work through the prism of this particular novel. Most of the articles collected in this volume thus consider Possession on its own or in relation with earlier and later works of fiction.