possession: a. the act
or fact of possesing
or the condition of
being possessed; the
holding or having of
something (material or
immaterial) as ones
own or in ones control;
Actual holding or
occupancy, as distinct
from ownership.
law
The visible possibiltiy
of excercising over a thing
such control as attaches
to lawful ownership (but
which may also exist apart
from lawful ownership)
the detention or enjoyment
of a thing by a person
himself or by another in
his name.
c. phr. in possession said
(a) of a thing actually
possessed or held often
with possessive, conversely
to give possession.
d. The action of seizing or
possessing oneself,
capture
e. The action of an idea or
feeling, possessing a person
transf and idea or impulse
that holds or affects one
strongly, a dominating
conviction
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Roland Michell is a semi-employed post docteral student in 1986's London Universtity. He finds a draught (or draft) of a letter that sets him on the course of a mystery. Along with way he meets the chilly Dr Maud Bailey who run the Women's Resource Center at Lincoln University who has obssessions of her own. Together they unravel the tale of a long concealed love affair between two Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabell La Motte. The journey takes the first to Seal Court the family seat of distant relations of Maud's then to London and Brittany where they are chased by two other scholars, the Scottish curmegeon (why do those two words always see to go together?)James Blackadder and Leonora Stern, the brash American from the University of Tallahassee, and finally back to London where it all began. All the time being chased by the more than slightly sinister Mortimer Cropper.
The work is suffuses with emotion and a sense tht time and space often wrap around themselves and we are the fools when we happen to witness them doing so. |
obessession:
the action
of beseiging, investment
seige.
b. transf the action of
any influence, notion or
fixed idea, which persis
tantly assails or vexes
especially to discompose
the mind.
c. psychol. An idea or
image that repeatedly
intrudes upon the mind
of a person against his
will and is usually
distressing. |
