English author A.S. Byatt, known for novels including Possession and The Children’s Book, as well as her critical studies of authors such as Iris Murdoch, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, has died at 87, the Guardian reports.

Byatt was born in the English city of Sheffield and educated at the University of Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Oxford. She worked as a university lecturer before becoming a full-time writer.

She made her literary debut in 1964 with the novel Shadow of a Sun, following that up a year later with the critical study Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch.

In 1990, she published Possession, a novel about two scholars researching the romantic relationship between two Victorian poets. The novel won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a 2002 film directed by Neil LaBute. Her other works of fiction included Angels and Insects, Babel Tower, Ragnarok, and Medusa’s Ankles.

Her admirers paid tribute to her on social media. On X, formerly known as Twitter, author Amber Sparks wrote, “I’m so sad to hear about this; I can’t even say how much of outsized influence Byatt’s work has been on me and my writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about Possession lately as I work in a project in the same vein, and how formative reading that book was.”

And author Gregory Howard posted, “All of A.S. Byatt's work is gorgeous, language-rich, and smart. All the big ones are worth reading but I'm particularly fond of the twin novels interrogating Victorian ideas of sex and loss in Angels and Insects. A great loss for literature and those who love it.”

Byatt’s survivors include her sister Margaret Drabble, the novelist and author of The Gates of Ivoryand The Dark Flood Rises.

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.