The cache of letters or other documents retrieved from the monastery coal scuttle, and affording the basis for a whole new understanding of the fall of princes or the causes of the French Revolution, is the stuff of scholarly fantasy. It is a fantasy exploited by A.S. Byatt in her novel Possession: A Romance (1990), which centres on the quest for letters as the key to understanding a famous author’s life and career. I take Possession as a cautionary tale in approaching the phenomenon represented by the letters of the great Australian novelist Christina Stead (1902–83) and her husband, ‘William Blake, novelist and economist’, in the words of her dedication to him in I’m Dying Laughing (1986). (Born Wilhelm Blech (1894–1968), when this American of German-Russian-Jewish extraction anglicised his name, he immodestly called himself after the visionary Romantic poet.) Having these letters in circulation could offer readers and critics many opportunities, yet I say ‘cautionary’ because they extend and refine interpretations rather than subject them to complete revision. That said, they are extraordinary opportunities.