A. S. Byatt (1936–2023)
Author of Possession
About the Author
A.S. Byatt was born on August 24, 1936 in Sheffield, England. She received a B.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1957, did graduate study at Bryn Mawr College from 1957-58, and attended Somerville College, Oxford from 1958-59. She was a staff member in the extra-mural department at the show more University of London from 1962-71. From 1968-69, she was also a part-time lecturer in the liberal studies department of the Central School of Art and Design, London. She was a lecturer at University College from 1972-80 and then senior lecturer from 1981-83. She became a full-time writer in 1983. Her works include The Biographer's Tale, The Virgin in the Garden, Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman, and The Children's Book. She also wrote numerous collections of short stories including Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, Elementals, and Little Black Book of Stories. Byatt received the English Speaking Union fellowship in 1957-58, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, the Silver Pen Award for Still Life, and the Booker Prize for Possession: A Romance in 1990. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Ulf Andersen / Gamma-Rapho
Series
Works by A. S. Byatt
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye / The Story of the Eldest Princess / Dragons' Breath (1995) — Author — 15 copies, 2 reviews
Possession | Angels & Insects — Author — 2 copies
Cold {story} 2 copies
The Biographer's Tale 1 copy
Sugar And Other Stories 1 copy
The Matisse Stories 1 copy
A Whistling Woman 1 copy
Envy {story} 1 copy
Sugar 1 copy
Îngeri și insecte 1 copy
2001 1 copy
George Eliot 1819 - 1880 1 copy
A Glass Coffin {short story} 1 copy
Introduction to "Beloved" 1 copy
By A. S. Byatt Possession 1 copy
Gode's Story {short story} 1 copy
Associated Works
The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám (FitzGerald) (1120) — Introduction, some editions — 6,055 copies, 87 reviews
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights [Modern Library] (2001) — Introduction, some editions — 1,923 copies, 24 reviews
A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction (2012) — Foreword, some editions — 1,453 copies, 54 reviews
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories (1974) — Introduction, some editions — 767 copies, 10 reviews
The History of England: By a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian (1791) — Introduction, some editions — 722 copies, 13 reviews
The Quest for Corvo : An Experiment in Biography (1934) — Introduction, some editions — 653 copies, 12 reviews
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen (2009) — Contributor — 411 copies, 18 reviews
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales (1998) — Contributor, some editions — 311 copies, 4 reviews
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection (1996) — Contributor — 259 copies, 3 reviews
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection (1993) — Contributor — 220 copies, 1 review
The Outspoken Princess and The Gentle Knight: A Treasury of Modern Fairy Tales (1994) — Contributor — 207 copies, 3 reviews
George Eliot: Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings (1991) — Editor, some editions; Introduction, some editions — 168 copies, 1 review
The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them (2015) — Contributor — 103 copies, 2 reviews
The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm (2010) — Introduction — 69 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Byatt, A. S.
- Legal name
- Duffy, Antonia Susan
- Other names
- Byatt, Antonia Susan
Drabble, Antonia Susan (birth) - Birthdate
- 1936-08-24
- Date of death
- 2023-11-16
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Cambridge (BA|1957|Newnham College)
Bryn Mawr College
University of Oxford (Somerville College) - Occupations
- short story writer
novelist
academic
teacher - Organizations
- University of London (University College)
Central School of Art and Design - Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1990)
Order of the British Empire (Dame Commander, 1999)
Premio Malaparte (1995)
Shakespeare Prize (2002)
Park Kyong-ni Prize (2017)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014) (show all 13)
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (1995)
PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1986)
Commonwealth Writers Prize (1991)
Erasmus Prize (2016)
British Academy (Fellow, 2017)
Golden Plate Award from American Academy of Achievement (2017)
Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award (2018) - Relationships
- Duffy, Peter (husband)
Byatt, Ian Charles Rayner (first husband)
Drabble, Margaret (sister)
Langdon, Helen (sister)
Holroyd, Michael (brother-in-law)
Swift, Rebecca (1) (niece) (show all 7)
Swift, Joe (nephew) - Short biography
- Antonia Susan Drabble was born in Yorkshire and educated at a Quaker school in York. After studying at Cambridge University and Bryn Mawr College, she did postgraduate work at Oxford University. In 1959, she married Ian Charles Rayner Byatt and had two children; she later married Peter John Duffy and had two more children. She goes by the pen name A.S. Byatt. She taught in the Extra-Mural Department of London University and the Central School of Art and Design, and in 1972 became full-time Lecturer in English and American Literature at University College, London. She left in 1983 to concentrate on her writing full-time. She has travelled widely to lecture and talk about her work, often with the British Council, and was Chairman of the Society of Authors between 1986 and 1988. She has served on the judging panels for a number of literary prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction, and is recognised as a distinguished critic, contributing regularly to journals and newspapers including the Times Literary Supplement, The Independent and the Sunday Times, as well as to BBC radio and television programs. Her first novel, Shadow of a Sun, was published in 1964. A.S. Byatt was awarded a CBE in 1990 and a DBE in 1999.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK
- Place of death
- London, Middlesex, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Discussions
BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE - SHEFFIELD in 75 Books Challenge for 2017 (June 2017)
Heritage Club and Hollywood in George Macy devotees (May 2017)
***Group Read of The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt in 2015 Category Challenge (April 2015)
JULY: Reading A. S. Byatt in Monthly Author Reads (September 2011)
Reviews
Roland Michell is an academic barely scraping by as a researcher, an expert on the poet Randolph Henry Ash. One day, he finds what he believes to be a previously unknown draft of a letter from Ash to an unnamed woman, who he determines from other sources to be the poet Christabel LaMotte. Not certain what exactly the letter means but with a gut feeling that it might be important, Roland does something he's never thought of doing before and takes the letter from the British Museum. Hot on the show more trail and determined to see if he can learn more about Ash and LaMotte's relationship, he meets Maud Bailey, a LaMotte scholar, and together they manage almost accidentally to gain access to LaMotte's ancestral home -- where amazingly, hidden away, they uncover Ash and LaMotte's passionate, previously entirely unknown correspondence. As Maud and Roland frantically continue their research, lying about their whereabouts to other scholars in their fervor to keep what they have found under wraps and solely their own, something blossoms between them. But other scholars are becoming suspicious, and it won't be long before Roland and Maud have to come clean about their discoveries.
I tried to read this book for the first time ages ago, when I was in college, and bounced off it then -- perhaps it was too close to home at the time. This time, I absolutely loved it. Byatt has so intricately crafted these interweaving stories and histories that I almost have trouble remembering that Ash and LaMotte weren't real poets. The book is composed of various types of prose -- the present day narrative, the past narrative, the letters themselves, various poetic works by both Ash and LaMotte, and a journal of a relative of LaMotte's, to name a few. I'm actually glad I listened to the audiobook because it's very possible I could have been bogged down by some of the poetry in print -- I enjoy shorter poetry, but can find longer works challenging. (Yes, I'm that person who skips all the songs when I read LOTR, sue me.) Possession is subtitled "a romance" -- but it's really multiple romances, wrapped up in a mystery, with a dose of historical fiction to tie it together, all written in the most intricate, lovely prose, and plotted and put together with exquisite detail. 5 stars. show less
I tried to read this book for the first time ages ago, when I was in college, and bounced off it then -- perhaps it was too close to home at the time. This time, I absolutely loved it. Byatt has so intricately crafted these interweaving stories and histories that I almost have trouble remembering that Ash and LaMotte weren't real poets. The book is composed of various types of prose -- the present day narrative, the past narrative, the letters themselves, various poetic works by both Ash and LaMotte, and a journal of a relative of LaMotte's, to name a few. I'm actually glad I listened to the audiobook because it's very possible I could have been bogged down by some of the poetry in print -- I enjoy shorter poetry, but can find longer works challenging. (Yes, I'm that person who skips all the songs when I read LOTR, sue me.) Possession is subtitled "a romance" -- but it's really multiple romances, wrapped up in a mystery, with a dose of historical fiction to tie it together, all written in the most intricate, lovely prose, and plotted and put together with exquisite detail. 5 stars. show less
I sent some of my smaller poems—a little sheaf—selected with trembling—to a great Poet—who shall be nameless, I cannot write his name—asking—Are These Poems? Have I—a Voice? He replied with courteous promptness—that they were pretty things—not quite 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳—and not always well-regulated by a proper sense of decorum—but he would encourage me, moderately—they would do well enough to give me an interest in life until I had—I quote him show more exactly—“sweeter and weightier responsibilities.” Now how should I be brought by this judgment to desire those—Mr Ash—how? You understood my very phrase—the 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦. You understand—in my life Three—and Three alone have glimpsed—that the need to set down words—what I see, so—but words too, words mostly—words have been all my life, all my life—this need is like the Spider’s need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵—the silk is her life, her home, her safety—her food and drink too—and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew—you will say she is patient—so she is—she may also be Savage—it is her Nature—she 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘵—or die of Sufeit—do you understand me?
—𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 by A.S. Byatt
This was a challenge to read aloud to the wife. I periodically would break away to look up some odd word or phrase or plant rendered in Latin. It is long and there are a lot of words. I mean, jam-packed in this thick fucker. The above passage comes from Chapter 10 titled “The Correspondence” which is entirely epistolary, composed of—I shit you not—five pages of italics, two poems, and a further forty-one pages of italics (!). This truthfully pushed me to get an eye exam and, subsequently, reading glasses. (Yes, I’m wearing them now.) The next chapter is a seven-page poem and precedes yet another poem before returning to the narrative proper in Chapter 12. Jesus Christ, talk about stories within stories within stories . . .
Which brings me to my biggest problem with this book—the story within a story device is taken so far, and into some many levels, that it feels more discursive and needlessly convoluted than is required. Kind of like that fourth level of 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 where they show up in a James Bond-esque snowbound world and have a grand shootout, causing me to audibly yawn in the theater. Yeah, we get it Mr. Nolan and Dame Byatt, you’re intelligent and pasted all these disparate pieces into a decoupage that is as equally impressive as it is self-indulgent. The subtitle to this novel is “A Romance”. Well, that does come in, but way late and only after a blizzard of scholarly fencing, literary treasure hunting, and characters that seem more in love with their own words than with any human who utters those words. So, all that cleverness slowly strangles the emotive power trying to break from those serpentine coils. Air. Sometimes you just need the room to breathe. Characters, narratives, humans in a python mating ball.
The ending is fantastic, however, and truly does hit with an unexpected cross to the jaw. There are moments of humor and the entire work deflates the pomposity of any intellectual pursuit; but it reinflates that goddamn balloon on the next page. The research is astonishing. It’s empirical and anecdotal. Its ambulatory nature does have a guide, after all. I just wish there had been a Virgil or Beatrice who could’ve led us through the intertwining paths, maybe stopping once in a while at a lookout or copse or dale, and wept over lost love instead of merely acknowledging it and gluing it to foam board.
I’m being hard on this. It was amazingly well written. I couldn’t have done it. But I also can’t drive a car at two hundred miles per hour on a thirty-three-degree bank for one hundred and eighty-eight laps. I yawn at NASCAR, too.
And, goddamnit, even I chose not to put that opening paragraph to this post in italics. Who wants to read forty-six pages of that shit in one chapter? Did the editor need to get an eye exam after, too? show less
—𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 by A.S. Byatt
This was a challenge to read aloud to the wife. I periodically would break away to look up some odd word or phrase or plant rendered in Latin. It is long and there are a lot of words. I mean, jam-packed in this thick fucker. The above passage comes from Chapter 10 titled “The Correspondence” which is entirely epistolary, composed of—I shit you not—five pages of italics, two poems, and a further forty-one pages of italics (!). This truthfully pushed me to get an eye exam and, subsequently, reading glasses. (Yes, I’m wearing them now.) The next chapter is a seven-page poem and precedes yet another poem before returning to the narrative proper in Chapter 12. Jesus Christ, talk about stories within stories within stories . . .
Which brings me to my biggest problem with this book—the story within a story device is taken so far, and into some many levels, that it feels more discursive and needlessly convoluted than is required. Kind of like that fourth level of 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 where they show up in a James Bond-esque snowbound world and have a grand shootout, causing me to audibly yawn in the theater. Yeah, we get it Mr. Nolan and Dame Byatt, you’re intelligent and pasted all these disparate pieces into a decoupage that is as equally impressive as it is self-indulgent. The subtitle to this novel is “A Romance”. Well, that does come in, but way late and only after a blizzard of scholarly fencing, literary treasure hunting, and characters that seem more in love with their own words than with any human who utters those words. So, all that cleverness slowly strangles the emotive power trying to break from those serpentine coils. Air. Sometimes you just need the room to breathe. Characters, narratives, humans in a python mating ball.
The ending is fantastic, however, and truly does hit with an unexpected cross to the jaw. There are moments of humor and the entire work deflates the pomposity of any intellectual pursuit; but it reinflates that goddamn balloon on the next page. The research is astonishing. It’s empirical and anecdotal. Its ambulatory nature does have a guide, after all. I just wish there had been a Virgil or Beatrice who could’ve led us through the intertwining paths, maybe stopping once in a while at a lookout or copse or dale, and wept over lost love instead of merely acknowledging it and gluing it to foam board.
I’m being hard on this. It was amazingly well written. I couldn’t have done it. But I also can’t drive a car at two hundred miles per hour on a thirty-three-degree bank for one hundred and eighty-eight laps. I yawn at NASCAR, too.
And, goddamnit, even I chose not to put that opening paragraph to this post in italics. Who wants to read forty-six pages of that shit in one chapter? Did the editor need to get an eye exam after, too? show less
There are readings—of the same text—that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, which snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are—believe it—impersonal readings—where the mind's eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind'sshow more
ear hears them sing and sing.
Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark—readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognizant of, our knowledge.
47. Possession by A. S. Byatt
OPD: 1990
format: 555-page paperback
acquired: April read: Jun 30 – Jul 31 time reading: 26:46, 2.9 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Fiction theme: Booker legacy
locations: London, Yorkshire and French Britany in 1986 and in the 19th-century
about the author: 1936 –2023: an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer born in Sheffield. Her sisters are the novelist Margaret Drabble and the art historian Helen Langdon.
It's little hard for me to adequately explain how much I enjoyed this book, was obsessed by it (possessed), and was so unrelentingly curious. I was aware of this while reading, from about page 7 when it fully struck that I wanted to be involved. And that feeling never spoiled. I adored this book. I want to tell you it's the best book written in my lifetime, and why. But I can't adequately express that. Nor do I know if that kind of evaluation makes sense. But, what's weird is that this was all fiction. It's just a book. My obsession was for information, fictional information about fictional characters. When characters discuss illegally digging up a buried body to find lost letters, my brain said, "dig! Justify it later. Just dig! I want those letters!" Although I can't say my brain used any words exactly.
Byatt's first really successful novel, a hugely successful one, was planned this way. She wanted to write about academic stuff, ideas she was interested in. And she thought that if she could hook readers on a mystery, then she could write anything she liked, and we would read it. So, she opens with 19th-century poetry (which she wrote herself, in time-period mimicry, stylistic flaws included), then has us sit with a meek research assistant to a professor studying this 19th-century author, when he, the meek assistant, makes a little discovery of unclear meaning. He finds a draft of a letter hinting at...something. And he steals the relic form the research library! I was hooked.
Then Byatt piles stuff on. More mystery, more discovery, romance, ancient and contemporary, and she can do romance gorgeously; but this romance is all newly found, layering the sense of discovery. oh. Mythology, standing stones. And poetry. Poetry everywhere. We learn about our researchers and their academic squabbles, and about their 19th-century subjects and 19th-century secret affairs. All this mad stuff works. I was fully possessed.
It's so strange to close this book and separate yourself from that that feeling. It's all fiction. It's just a book. But it's a magnificent book. I was obsessed, and it lasted and stayed with me a long time. I loved how reasonable the whole thing was. Just researchers acting crazy, and 19th-century poets acting like 19th-century poets. Ultimately, despite seance's and the quest for ghosts, there is nothing supernatural here. Except what occurs to the reader.
Byatt was very aware of what she was doing and how well it worked. She has talked about it. She also wrote about it here, giving us a beautiful section on the experience of reading, on what it does to the mind, on all the different ways we read (partially quoted above). And then immediately follows that with a pseudo-19th-century poem on hunger, which we all must process, at least in some mindset, as hunger for information. "we must have more... We are driven/By endings as by hunger. We must know/How it comes out...". This is curiosity, an obsessive form of it. These sections together near the end are not an accident. It's a compression of everything the book has just done to the reader, into a few pages. It's the author creating magic out of nothing, and aware of it, and taking time to tell her reader about it. That's just beautiful.
Recommended to anyone who likes post-1950's literature.
2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/362165#8596175 show less
A new Byatt novel is something to look forward to and treasure, and this one certainly didn't disappoint me. In fact, I would say it's one of her best. You would have thought that the intellectual history of the Edwardian period, with its built-in narrative structure leading up to the Great War, has been done to death by now, but Byatt manages to find new and original paths through it. Weaving together ideas about childhood and storytelling with the political and social movements of the time show more is a clever idea, and it's done in subtle and clever ways. I was particularly impressed by the way she lets history gradually take over from fiction as we get towards the end. You do feel occasionally that you are being treated more like an intelligent undergraduate than a novel-reader, but it's done in the nicest possible way, and you don't have to write an essay about it afterwards.
On a sillier note, the least surprising thing about this book is that the central characters include two sisters from Yorkshire (we'd be queueing up to get our money back if they didn't!). There's also a buried joke somewhere in Byatt, of all people, choosing to write a novel in which potters (even if they are small-p potters) play such a large part. Of course, it's not really a joke. Having aired her views in the press about what children's literature should not be, Byatt is now discussing in a fictional context how storytelling works as a part of the experience of childhood (and indeed adulthood). show less
On a sillier note, the least surprising thing about this book is that the central characters include two sisters from Yorkshire (we'd be queueing up to get our money back if they didn't!). There's also a buried joke somewhere in Byatt, of all people, choosing to write a novel in which potters (even if they are small-p potters) play such a large part. Of course, it's not really a joke. Having aired her views in the press about what children's literature should not be, Byatt is now discussing in a fictional context how storytelling works as a part of the experience of childhood (and indeed adulthood). show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 83
- Also by
- 74
- Members
- 38,171
- Popularity
- #471
- Rating
- 4.0
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