A.S. Byatt, one of the most ambitious writers of her generation, whose dazzling 1990 novel, “Possession,” won the Booker Prize and brought her international fame as a novelist and unapologetic intellectual, has died. Her longtime publisher, Chatto & Windus, announced the death in a statement on Friday, saying she had died at her home. Ms. Byatt was a brilliant critic and scholar who broke the academic mold by publishing 11 novels and six collections of short stories. “I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel,” she bristled in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1991. The mystery is set in motion when a young scholar discovers something extraordinary at the London Library in 1985: old love letters tucked inside a rare edition of Victorian poetry.

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Persons: ”, Booker, Byatt, “, Ms Organizations: Chatto & Windus, The New York Times Magazine, London Library