How we cite our quotes: Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Quote #1
The London Library was Roland's favourite place. It was shabby but civilised, alive with history but inhabited also by living poets and thinkers who could be found squatting on the slotted metal floors of the stacks, or arguing pleasantly at the turning of the stair. Here Carlyle had come, here George Eliot had progressed through the bookshelves. (1.2)
Right off the bat, Possession establishes itself as a book about reading. We would have a very different impression of Roland Mitchell if his favorite place in the world were Wembley Stadium or the London Bank, or something like that.
Quote #2
It was this urgency above all that moved and shocked Roland. He thought he knew Ash fairly well, as well as anyone might know a man whose life seemed to be all in his mind, who lived a quiet and exemplary married life for forty years, whose correspondence was voluminous indeed, but guarded, courteous, and not of the most lively. Roland liked that in Randolph Henry Ash. (1.22)
A recurring theme throughout Possession concerns our ability, as readers, to get to know people through their written works. In fact, not only does Roland Mitchell feel that he knows R. H. Ash, he also feels that his favorite author is somehow part of him. Which writers feel like that for you?
Quote #3
There were times when Blackadder allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say his conscious thinking life, in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man's thoughts, all his work another man's work. And then he thought it did not perhaps matter so greatly. He did after all find Ash fascinating, even after all these years. It was a pleasant subordination, if he was a subordinate. (3.18)
Like Roland Mitchell, James Blackadder is intellectually devoted to Randolph Henry Ash's writings. Luckily for him, he's pretty content to spend his life editing another man's literary output.