Book Club Guide

Possession

by A.S. Byatt · 1990 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Literary scholarship as love — and its discontents
The Victorians as people who felt things we have difficulty feeling
What documents reveal and conceal about lives and desire

About this book

Two literary scholars — Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey — discover a cache of letters between two Victorian poets and gradually realise that the poets had a secret passionate affair. Byatt's novel interweaves the present-day scholarly detective story with poems, letters and fairy tales in the voices of the Victorian characters. Winner of the Booker Prize.

Published in 1990, Possession won the Booker Prize and became a bestseller. Byatt wrote it partly as a reaction against what she saw as the academicisation of literature and the loss of the reading experience that literature existed to create.

Discussion questions

The novel weaves between the Victorian story and the modern scholarly narrative. How does Byatt manage this double structure — and which world do you find more emotionally compelling?
The poems and letters in the voices of the Victorian poets are integral to the novel. How does Byatt achieve authenticity in these — and what does the poetry add that the novel's prose cannot?
Roland and Maud's relationship is slow to develop. How does Byatt use the parallel Victorian love story to develop what her contemporary characters cannot say to each other?
The novel engages extensively with Victorian literature and thought. Does this erudition enrich or occasionally overwhelm the human story?
Possession is one of the few Booker Prize winners to have been genuinely popular. What does it offer readers who are not academics — and what does it offer those who are?