Providing innovative readings of the key texts of A.S. Byatt's oeuvre, this study analyses the negotiations of individual identity, cultural memory, and literature which inform Byatt's novels. Lena Steveker explores how Byatt's texts negotiate individual identity within a field of references not only to British literature, but also to cultural memory, which they establish as systems of reference for both their protagonists and their readers. Steveker investigates how Byatt's work conceptualizes literature as a medium of cultural memory which exerts normative and formative power on individual identity. By linking the issue of female identity to the role of literature in cultural memory, this study also offers a new approach to the discussions of female emancipation in which Byatt's texts engage.