“Winner of England's Booker Prize
1990.
Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets.
Following a trail of letters, journals and poems, they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.”
Roland Michell is a literary researcher who has recently completed his PhD studying the eminent (fictitious) Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash. He is frustrated that he cannot find himself a permanent job, however, whilst in a London library, he discovers, hidden in the back of a book that once belonged to Ash, two draft handwritten letters to an unknown woman. Excited by this discovery, he secretes these letters with his personal belongings before returning the book to the librarian. Michell suspects that Ash must have been having an affair and begins to delve deeper to unearth who the letters were meant for. His knowledge of Ash leads him to theorise that the letters were intended for a contemporary of Ash, a minor poet named Christabel LaMotte.
Dr Maud Bailey is both a distant relative and scholar of Christabel LaMotte and Michell arranges to meet her in Lincoln to discuss his hypothesis. Maud shows him some additional documents which show a likely correspondence took place between the two poets around 1858/59. It would be a significant find for the academics if Ash and LaMotte had been having an affair, as it had been widely understood that Ash was happily married, and LaMotte was probably a lesbian. Michell admits to Maud about the letters he has stolen, whilst she confirms she is intrigued and wants to find out more about the affair. Any academic who managed to discover the truth about the relationship would bolster their career, so Maud and Roland try to keep their research secret; but hot on their heels are another group of scholars including James Blackadder, and American scholars Mortimer Cropper and Leonora Stern, thus much excitement and underhand activities follow in the pursuit of the truth.