It took me an irritatingly long time to read this, for various reasons, but every time I picked it back up, I did feel, in a way, possessed. A big old dense book, 606 pages in my edition, and one that feels like you're doing your own academic research in a way: sprawling, occasionally tedious, frequently engrossing. Between the letters and the journals and the poetry and the academic scuffles and the newspaper articles and so on it feels almost like your own triumph by the time you finish it. Beautiful and evocative, an unbelievably effective pastiche, (both of Victorian England and 1980s academic England, not that it was exactly far away in 1995; but what I mean is it had that frequently almost thoughtless British judgemental nastiness in some of its dialogue and narration and it captures the state of academia + academic thinking at the time), and I enjoyed the clashing machinations of the scholars a lot. I can't honestly say I thought much of either Randolph or Roland (except for his advocating for Lady Bailey to have her wheelchair) but that's Victorian poetic men and colourless male academics for you...? (Being flippant, but I never WAS a fan of Byron or Shelley particularly...) I appreciated their function but I think I ended up pledging myself to Beatrice and Maud and Blanche and Leonora on the whole. And I especially enjoyed Sabine's journal section; vivid. Fantastically clever intertwining of family fates and romances and literature and passions, and a wry examination of the state of modern Victorian academia. Desperate to read some criticism on this. How many free articles do you get on JSTOR?? 😭 I've also tabbed ('tabbed' hah not really I just folded the corners lol) a bunch of pages to go back to because they had quotes I really liked.