Possession by A.S. ByattVintage International, 1991 (originally Chatto and Windus, 1990)

Oh, academia! I love how Byatt plays with genre, with the idea of romance in its various senses, with the chase/quest/race, with detective stories and novels and letters. I love how the texts that her characters are anaylzing are themselves a significant part of her own text: her protagonists are readers, and we have the pleasure of reading alongside them.