A. S Byatt
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Young writer Olive Wellwood, her sister Violet and husband, Humphry, live in a charmed home in the countryside with their seven children, though we follow most closely the older two, Tom, who is a sort of "lost" child more at home in the woods, and his more practical and determined sister Dorothy. Olive is a famous writer of children's books, in the golden age of fiction about children, inventing fairy tales drawn from her reading of folk tales and...
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These two fascinating novellas, like A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel Possession, are set in the mid-nineteenth century, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance. "Morpho Eugenia" is a lively Gothic fable of the Earthly Paradise, of the Victorian obsession with Darwinian theories of breeding and sexuality and the parallels between insect and human society - the capture and taming of nature, whether it be a young woman in a country house...
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When they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now, the sisters are grown and have become hostile strangers—until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives. It is the skittish, snake-obsessed Simon who draws Julia and Cassandra into his charismatic orbit ... and into menacing proximity
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As a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and trace their movements from London to Yorkshire-and from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany-an extraordinary counterpoint of passions & ideas emerges. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives...
8) Possession
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Roland is an academic researcher who discovers some important letters written by a famous Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash. Ash was presumed to have been totally devoted to his wife, but Roland finds letters written to another unnamed woman, and soon determines that the intended recipient was another, less well-known poet, Christabel LaMotte. Roland contacts Maud, an expert on LaMotte's life and work. Despite her skepticism, the two begin to investigate,...
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As a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and trace their movements from London to Yorkshire-and from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany-an extraordinary counterpoint of passions & ideas emerges. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives...
10) The Djinn in the nightingale's eye (Colorado State Library Book Club Collection): five fairy stories
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handful of brilliantly imaginative historical and contemporary fairy stories for grow-ups by the Booker Prize-winning author of "Possession". Packaged in a beautiful little illustrated edition similar to Byatt's extremely successful collection, "The Matisse Stories", this collection will make a lovely, affordably priced gift that will introduce her magical writing to many new readers.
11) Possession
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An academic researcher discovers some important letters written by a famous Victorian poet, and begins to investigate the story behind them.
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While attending a conference in Istanbul, Dr. Alithea Binnie happens to encounter a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems: first, she doubts that he's real, and second, because she's a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually, she's beguiled and makes a wish that surprises...