A.S. Byatt knows literary studies. Possession is possibly the best description of the best and worst of the discipline that I have ever come across. She accurately captures the thrill of holding in your hands an old edition with a particular history, the uncovering of that piece which not everyone has already seen. The whole book is an exploration of that slow uncovering which historical research is all about, the story that changes and shifts as new information is introduced; and the active creation of an interpretation. Together they make up the best of this discipline.

And then there is the scathing parody of both extremes of authorial focus: the biographically oriented, and the sexual/feminist/psychoanalytical, both of which plague the discipline in their attempts to capture and speak for the author.

Strangely, this was never how the book was presented to me whenever people tried to get me to read it. The emphasis was always on the developing relationship between the academics in parallel with that of the authors they study. This to me was a side point. I read the book as more of a love letter to a discipline than as a love story.