Although thus far she has written only three novels, A. S. Byatt has nonetheless achieved a distinguished place as a person of letters in the last two decades. As novelist, critic, reviewer, editor, and lecturer, Byatt offers in her work an intellectual kaleidoscope of our contemporary world. Demonstrating awesome competence in an astounding variety of areas, she is at ease whether exploring the Renaissance, teaching a Wallace Stevens poem, editing Willa Cather, discussing van Gogh, writing for the Times, or broadcasting for the BBC radio. Her novels, like her life, are dominated by an absorbing, discriminating mind which finds intellectual passions as vibrant and consuming as emotional ones. With the publication in 1978 of her most recent novel, The Virgin in the Garden (the first in a projected tetralogy), Byatt has come fully into her own as a fiction writer and has guaranteed her place in literary histories of...