Article: A.S. in Wonderland: A.S. Byatt's favorite books take possession of heart, mind, and memory. (That Made a Difference).(narrative; recommended books)

WHEN I WAS A CHILD -- IN WARTIME, PRE-television--books were my life. I had very bad asthma and often spent two weeks in bed reading. I didn't like books about real children; I liked books about other worlds, full of forests and strange creatures. My childhood reading made me want to write, and so for this piece I've picked two books I discovered at that time--Alice in Wonderland, full of mystery and common sense, and (cheating slightly) a series of illustrated books of 19th-century poems my mother gave me. They were wonderful stories in singing verse: Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott and Morte d'Arthur, Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Coleridge's The Rime of the ...

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