How we cite our quotes: Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Quote #7
Beatrice read Ragnarök and Ask to Embla. She took a First and fell in love with Randolph Henry Ash. Such loves were once not uncommon. (7.1)
Beatrice Nest is one of those characters in Possession whose romantic ideals have been shaped by their favorite literary works. Unfortunately for her, she never finds a real-life version of the kind of love that she saw represented in the poems of Ash.
Quote #8
Today I laid down Melusina having come trembling to the end of this marvellous work. What shall I say of it? It is truly original, although the general public may have trouble in recognizing its genius, because it makes no concession to vulgar frailties of imagination, and because its virtues are so far removed in some ways at least from those expected of the weaker sex. Here is no swooning sentiment, no timid purity, no softly gloved lady-like patting of the reader's sensibility, but lively imagination, but force and vigour. (7.68)
During her life, Christabel LaMotte felt that only two people had really appreciated her writing properly: Blanche Glover and Randolph Henry Ash. She couldn't have known that Ellen Ash also admired her work and was big enough to recognize its strengths despite the fact that Christabel had had an affair with her husband.
Quote #9
I should add that my poems do not, I think, spring from the Lyric Impulse—but from something restless and myriad-minded and partial and observing and analytic and curious[…]. What makes me a Poet, and not a novelist—is to do with the singing of the Language itself. For the difference between poets and novelists is this—that the former write for the life of the language—and the latter write for the betterment of the world. (8.23)
As we read the Ash-LaMotte correspondence, we get windows into their deepest thoughts about the nature and purpose of their own writing, as well as into their thoughts about the purpose and power of literature in general.