A. S. Byatt’s sixth novel, Possession: A Romance, was published in 1990 to immediate commercial success and critical acclaim. It won the Booker Prize and the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Friction prize, topped best-seller lists, and was into its eighth print run midway through 1991. In 2002 it was adapted into a rather less successful film directed by Neil LaBute which starred Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle.

The novel’s first epigraph, together with its subtitle, clearly positions Possession within the genre of Romance. While Romance is the structuring principle of the novel, among its narrative strategies is the plaiting together of a number of other genres whose ori

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Published 14 October 2008

Citation: Mitchell, Kate. "Possession". The Literary Encyclopedia. 14 October 2008.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2602, accessed 9 February 2010.]