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Possession and Christina

My apologies to the author of Possession: the plot device is built around a letter that a graduate student finds pressed in a book belonging to a pertinent poet. I had declared that device implausible and weak: if the poet was so renowned, surely the pages of his books would have been studied already if nothing for his pencilled notes in them.

However recently a letter was discovered in Texas A&M's Cushing Library written by Christina Rossetti to a friend: a poet around whom the woman poet in Possession must have been inspired for her Pre-Raphaelite connections and feminism, if not her secretive personal life. I can't believe something like this was found, and in just those circumstances: anyone could have found it, even me.

I never had much doing in the Cushing Library because obtaining one of their books is a laborious process and I don't like reading under a watch, but my interest is definitely renewed. The book is still there. Maybe I can see her letter next time I go.

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