My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson

by Alfred Habegger

Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson's growth-a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.

Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson's own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson's story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father's political isolation after the Whig Party's collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice.

The definitive treatment of Dickinson's life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.

From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History, Literature, Literary Criticism

764 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Alfred Habegger is professor emeritus in English at the University of Kansas, where he taught from 1966 until his retirement in 1996. He earned his BA at Bethel College in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967.

Reviews

[Wendell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a fairly ravenous reader – and I also teach Dickinson to college freshmen in my Intro to American Literature class – but it took me more than four months to finish this biography of one of my favorite writers, and almost every page was a slog. Dickinson herself struggles to appear in Habegger's version of her life, in part because she is obscured by such a mountain of minutiae and of scholarly score-settling (Habegger’s pedantic and persnickety comments regarding other writers’ bad research or unsubstantiated interpretations became a dead weight long before I’d gotten through a third of the book). There’s a very great deal of gleeful myth-busting here (myths at least by Habegger’s lights) and an equal amount of what can only be called Dickinsonian High Trivia. It’s an academic’s biography, not a writer’s or a reader’s biography, and the book suffers for that. The slightly scoffing tone with which Habegger dispenses with all that silly talk about Dickinson’s intimate and passionate relationships with women betrays a patina of homophobia, while the extended treatments of her putative male love objects (neither of whom apparently requited her interest) seems colored by at least a bit of wishful thinking. Her relationship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson gets oddly short shrift, and Habegger’s insistence that Dickinson could have known nothing of her brother’s affair with Mabel Loomis Todd is utterly baffling. The poet whose house was her world didn’t realize that her brother, over the course of a 13-year affair, not infrequently led his mistress upstairs in order to have sex with her? It is fair to say that Dickinson is a tough cookie for any biographer, so credit is due where credit is due; but there’s nothing in this volume that adds to enjoyment of Dickinson as a writer and thinker or that fleshes her out into a real human being with three full dimensions. (I begin to fear that such a task will remain forever impossible.) But what is laid away more than anything in this biography is the Dickinson of joy and delight. Granted, those experiences existed alongside darkness, obsession, and what Habegger is at least brave enough to call Dickinson’s madness, but they certainly existed: We know because the poetry tells us so. Habegger, however, leaves the impression of having been so engrossed in his index cards that he failed to notice.

[Deborah Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short review: If you're going to read a biography of Dickinson, this one is probably your best bet.

The dirty details: I sought this out when I was about 250 pages into Cynthia Griffin Wolff's biography of Dickinson. Hers is a beautiful book, and I intend to finish it; but although it gives valuable context to Dickinson's life, I felt a certain lack in the nuts-and-bolts department. I wanted more basic facts.

This book has them, in abundance. Dickinson herself remains elusive, of course. We may not be able to know how she felt about the terrifying stories in the Sabbath School Visiter [sic], but I was thrilled to know this children's magazine existed and had been read by the poet in her childhood. (Her uncle was the editor and gave Emily and her younger sister Lavinia a subscription.) I was able to find copies online and read some of the actual text for myself, but Habegger offers some extremely representative summaries:

March brought "An Infant Missionary's Dying Gift," which told of Frederick Dewey and how he fell into a barrel of boiling water at the age of three and then gave the missionaries all he had, sixty cents, before expiring.

In August the future poet probably read an excruciating true-life narrative, "The Lost Finger," in which twelve-year-old Elizabeth sticks an index finger into a hole in a "revolving card" at a factory and has the flesh torn away up to the first joint, leaving "about an inch of the clean, white, naked bone." "O!" adds the narrator, "the nerves of that very finger of my own, twitch and tremble as I write it."

I know people worry these days about the violence children are exposed to in video games and the news, and I think they're right to be concerned. I just think it's interesting to keep in mind what used to pass for appropriate recreational reading for kids back in the allegedly good old days.

Anyway. Habegger offers up plenty of documentation -- stories such as these, lists of books and authors Dickinson read and admired (if you have a picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning hanging in your room, it's safe to say you're a fan), and lots of letters and news articles and, of course, poetry.

This book is probably the best guide to learning as much about Dickinson as it's possible to know from the outside. The reader is still left looking wistfully at the firmly closed door of Emily Dickinson's elusive mind and heart and genius. But no biographer can unlock that chamber, and Habegger is wise enough not to try.

The maximum nerditude postscript: Although I found this book incredibly helpful in my research, I still don't know why Habegger dislikes Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily's niece, so much. I'm about to start reading Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds, in the hope of learning more about the copyright battles that went on after Dickinson's death. Dickinson's niece was certainly involved in those, but so was Dickinson's brother's mistress, as well as that mistress's daughter. Dickinson may have led a quiet life, but her family certainly got up to some interesting shenanigans. Watch this space for more dirt on that subject.

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd have given this 2 stars were it not solely for the massive amount of research and collecting of letters, dates, history, etc. that precluded the writing of something like this.

However, Emily Dickinson remains just as an elusive figure as before this (or any other attempt at her biography) was written.

In the introduction, a literary critic addressed the fact that sometimes a poet's works were written for personal reasons and were never meant for others' eyes at all.

"At certain levels, we are not meant to understand at all, and our interpretation, indeed our reading itself, is an intrusion."

That alone fills me with a measure of guilt. As though I'm reading someone's diary without their permission.
On the flip side, I am grateful to have had these words before me from a young age. Because I felt a kinship toward her. The thoughts she expressed. The feelings she, obviously, harbored deeply but which were known to few.

Perhaps another reason as to why I've long felt a connection to Ms. Dickinson is simply because she was a fellow introvert who had no need for accolades amongst her peers-- or the reading society at large.
Her words were for a few select friends ... and herself.
And that was enough for her.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best Dickinson biography I've read, though Sewall's is very thorough, and the best from 1974-2001 or so. Habegger includes the newly discovered daguerreotype acquired by Gura, of Dickinson not age 16 (the universally familiar portrait, in Amherst College collection).
Besides the photos, his narrative is fine, even moving: Habegger's account of Dickinson's response to being chided by Helen Hunt Jackson for not publishing, and his account of Dickinson's funeral in the house. "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," like many of ED's later poems, was written on found paper--as was the Gettysburg address--; for instance, a graduation program from Massachusetts College of Agriculture, which her father also helped found.
The brilliant, courageous Col. Higginson, who led the first federally organized black regiment in the Civil War, perhaps found his courage failing in his famous encounter with the poet in 1870, "I never was with any one who drained my nerve power so much...I am glad not to live near her"(524).
He may have felt in almost a medieval joust, which despite his military training and bravery, he had not won. Perhaps gendre dynamics have always suffered from brilliant women--like Jane Austen, whose wit is ignored by her pious brothers' epitaph in Winchester Cathedral--though it is only fair to add, powerful women, as with men, need not be brilliant.
The poet confessed to her supporter and reviser, "I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15. My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not & afraid to ask anyone else lest he should know." Patriarchal power explain ED's, "I do not cross my Father's land to any House or town"(521) when inviting Higginson from Newport where he lived to Amherst. The Col sized up the men well, "Her father was not severe I should think but remote." (One might perhaps say the same of Austen's brothers.)
Father's investments fostered both Amherst colleges: one was the private, toll-charging Sunderland Bridge. (I think of a one-lane toll bridge I crossed in England, to an historic house and golf course; it was perhaps 30 mi from Wethersfield Air Base, as I recall, but my photos are on a decommissioned computer.)

[Ariel Kalati · Rating 3 out of 5]

It pains me to give only 3 stars to a biography of my favorite writer, especially a biography that gave so much depth of information. But the author wrote this so smugly and obnoxiously that it became a slog to get through. I'm a huge fan of historic context and weird minutiae, especially if it's about Emily Dickinson, and I did truly appreciate the information given. But dude, we get it, you're the most specialest Dickinson scholar of all time, much smarter than those other idiots with whom you disagree on minor points. (Or on major points- god forbid anyone consider Dickinson may have been attracted to women, or had a relationship with Sue that wasn't just "creepy overeager weirdo friend latches onto her sister-in-law too hard and sister-in-law endures it for the sake of her marriage", or that "Master" could have been anyone on earth besides Reverend Wadsworth). I also disliked the attitude that Dickinson's "little girl-hood" was a sign of silly immaturity and that the only thing that led her to grow up and understand the concerns of grown-up women was having her heart broken by a man (who was DEFINITELY Wadsworth and if you think otherwise, you're an idiot). Generally this book is not too misogynistic in its attitude towards Dickinson, but I thought that was annoying. Also, I know academics can get petty with each other, but I found it a little much to constantly be sniping about specific scholars with whom he disagreed in this book that is ostensibly written for a mainstream biography-reading audience. Can I please just read about Emily and her life and her poetry? Anyway, 3 well-earned stars despite it all for the wealth of information about this fascinating gifted poet, however annoyingly presented.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendid biography of Emily Dickinson—complex, generous, and nuanced, interwoven with insightful discussion of some her poems in relation to her life.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woke up this morning with Dickinson lines floating through my brain, and remembered that I reviewed this biography for the LA Times back in 2001, and that it helped me read her poetry. Then, much to my surprise, I found my review on line. Here it is:

For a poet who didn’t get out much, Emily Dickinson has certainly inspired some big literary biographies. The sheer size of the books, several having more than 500 pages, would seem unnecessary if the poet were simply the half-mad hysterical recluse of Amherst retreating in terror from the cultural changes of the 19th century or if she were simply the author of some of the most quotable first lines ever written: “The heart has many doors”; “I heard a Fly buzz--when I died”; “Success is counted sweetest/By those who ne’er succeed”; “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.”

But as Alfred Habegger’s “My Wars Are Laid Away in Books” reminds us, Dickinson’s life was as complicated as the poems. They are rich explorations of the world she knew, of the nature of loss, of the fragile possibilities of hope, of bliss and of despair. They are poems that chafe against history and against the role she was forced into as a daughter and as a woman in Victorian New England.

Dickinson’s life, perhaps because of its very oddness, is important precisely because it illuminates the poetry and because it tells us some essential things about our cultural history. Even though Habegger--who has already established a reputation for himself as a thorough and eminently readable biographer (his life of Henry James, father of the novelist and philosopher, is deservedly admired)--says that “straight autobiographical detail” remains “essentially out of place in her verse,” he makes a strong case that Dickinson’s genius is essentially linked to her time and place.


Born in 1830, she seldom left her hometown of Amherst, Mass. By 1860, she had become mostly a recluse, living with her parents and sister, next door to her brother and sister-in-law, Susan, with whom she had a passionately demanding intellectual and spiritual relationship for most of 30 years. During the last 15 years of her life, she seldom left her own house and talked even to some old friends from behind the protection of a half-closed door. Over the course of this seemingly restricted life, she wrote her large body of impassioned poetry. During the period 1862 through 1865, while the rest of the country exploded in the Civil War, Dickinson wrote in a white hot creative fire, completing hundreds of poems each year. Habegger has done a good deal of digging, finding new relationships among biographical detail, the composition of some of Dickinson’s brilliantly emotional letters and the making of her poems. He has incorporated much of the textual study done with Dickinson’s manuscripts in recent years, particularly that of R.W. Franklin in his 1998 edition of the poems. He has learned from the historical work of feminist scholars who have begun to trace the networks of support and education available to American women in the early years of the 19th century. He has studied the critical work of psychoanalytic critics and gender theorists who have tried to explain Dickinson’s attitudes and oddness through their interpretive lenses (although Habegger does not subscribe to any of the more extravagant claims about the poet’s sexual activity or orientation).

His Dickinson remains very much a woman whose life was circumscribed by her times, although her imagination and completely unconventional interpretation of her world made her the solitary visionary we know. He writes, “Her work in life would be to attempt and achieve an unprecedented imaginative freedom while dwelling in what looks like privileged captivity.”

Habegger is perhaps most interesting in his discussion of the religious movements that surrounded the poet and her ability to resist the pressures to draw her into an unthinking acceptance of metaphysical interpretations. He insists that “one of the biggest mistakes we make with Dickinson is to detach her from the religious currents of the 1850s, without which she could not have become herself.” Several waves of Evangelical fervor swept through New England in the first half of Dickinson’s century, replacing a severe Puritanism with the more emotional demand for an individual conversion experience. This new conformity could only further isolate a thinker as independent as Dickinson. Habegger contends convincingly that one of the major intellectual moments of her life was “her struggle to devise a nonorthodox ‘hope’ of her own.” And that “hope” would become the central moment of much of her poetry.


It is surely the highest praise for a literary biography to say that it sends us back with renewed appreciation to the work of the author it discusses, and Habegger is best when he discusses Dickinson’s poetry. In one of the many examples throughout this book, he discusses a lovely little lyric that I had never paid much attention to before:

Our lives are Swiss--

So still--so cool--

Till some odd afternoon

The Alps neglect their curtains

And we look further on.

Italy stands the other side.

While like a guard between--

The solemn Alps--

The siren Alps

Forever intervene--

Then he writes admiringly that “this voice does not command or moralize in the fashion of so many Victorian voices, even Whitman’s,” while broadening the lyric with its cultural context: “Growing up in a culture that saw nature and human experience as hieroglyphs of heaven, she early acquired the art of rendering exemplary her own life turning it into story or drama.” Finally, he personalizes the poem, telling us that Dickinson sent it next door “to Sue in late 1859 ... [it] reminds us of the writer’s captive spectatorship in winter, her bedroom looking south to the Mount Holyoke Range and west to the curtained windows of the Italianate villa next door. Yet to limit the poem to these perspectives would kill it.”

By gently and unpretentiously providing cultural, philosophical and personal contexts for the poem, Habegger has revivified a reading of it. “My Wars Are Laid Away in Books” is a big book about the author of small poems. But Habegger is never dull. He is absolutely convincing about the importance of his subject. He has brought together a couple of generations worth of scholarly work on the life, texts and time of Emily Dickinson, and he has applied it all in a generous rereading of her unforgettable poetry.

les.latimes.com/2001/nov/25/books/bk-...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly readable, well-written biography of Emily Dickinson. Unlike some biographies or studies of Dickinson, this book engages the average reader rather than flooding the reader with too much information. I find that some books on Dickinson are so overwrought (See Susan Howe) that they leave me behind.

I like the set up of the book. The sub sections within each chapter are relatively self-contained. Although I think the author takes some gratuitous shots at other academics for perceived failings about Dickinson in their works, he mostly presents his analysis based on documentary evidence and avoids over conjecturing. Dickinson's life today is subject to over conjecture.

Final thought: I'm of the opinion that the Gura photo in this book is not Emily Dickinson. Rather, I believe the photo of Dickinson with her friend Kate Scott Turner is, in fact, Dickinson.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This straight-forward, by the facts, cradle-to-grave biography is full of detail but surprisingly or not, underwhelms around insights into what Emily tick. Perhaps that is because, similar and second only to Shakespeare, Dickinson's biography lacks evidence into exactly what was going on in that brain other than her poetry, and reading too much biography into the poems is perilous. Her letters were burnt at death, tragically, but that was an intimate family decision.

This biography necessarily focuses on the family history, especially the parental and sibling story lines, while Emily seems to remain in the background. To Habegger's credit, nothing spectacular is posited, nothing is asserted without credible evidence. Dickinson is a subject where it is very easy to speculate into wild theories about what drove her into seclusion, why nearly all of her acquaintances called her mad, why she was so difficult to get along with. Habegger doesn't go far off of the beaten path, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. A fine biography for those who simply want the facts.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this was just too detailed for me - I do love Emily Dickinson's poetry, but I'm not ready to assimilate quite this much information about her family background, home town, school, etc, etc. I am impressed by how much research the author has done and his love of his subject, but I'd have done better to start with a shorter overview.

[Shellian731 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ironic that a biography of a creative poetic genius would be written in prose so clunky and inflexible that it could be carved into several pairs of wooden shoes.

Well-researched, but not exactly a riveting page turner.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alfred Habegger's fine 2001 biography of Emily Dickinson was on my poetry bookshelf simply as a reference book for years. I associated Dickinson with the genteel but boring couple in the Simon and Garfunkel song "Dangling Conversation": "She reads her Emily Dickinson and I my Robert Frost." Women's lives are currently being reevaluated and amazing discoveries are being made. Just for amusement I watched the recent TV series on Dickinson, drenched in magical realism and hilarious anachronisms, but still rather serious. In one scene she meets a stylish personification of death, in another she takes a time machine to meet Sylvia Plath, etc. Then there is one implausible but endearing character, Higginson, who corresponds with her from his military post in the Civil War; he encourages her writing all while training an unauthorized group of African-American soldiers.

So I decided I needed to determine what parts of the story were historically accurate, and then just how serious a poetic voice was Dickinson. Habegger's biography is the right choice for sifting fact from fiction, and in the process provides a context for appreciating her work. He makes sense out of a huge mountain of minutia that has accumulated over years of research by various editors. Crumbs of history have been sifted from public records, correspondence, and various archival sources. An enormous amount of work has gone into dating her surviving manuscripts, and correcting those dates repeatedly. Habegger correlates the known biographical information with the timing of a large number of her poems. He paints a convincing picture of how her stanzas originate in the ups and downs of relationships with family, personal friends, epistolary friends, and erotic attachments. And then the words are polished to transcend the particular and reach for the universal.

The poet's relationship with her sister-in-law was in fact crucial to her as a person and as a poet.
One of many cultured women in Amherst, Susan Dickinson appreciated fine language and was a major influence on her sister-in-law's writing. The exact nature of the relationship, according to Habegger, is unknowable.

And Higginson does in fact play a key role in encouraging her work, finally meeting her in person, speaking at her funeral, and facilitating posthumous publication. He is a writer, an abolitionist, a supporter of women's rights. He left a description of his meeting with the poet, who left him feeling rather mentally exhausted.

This volume contains serious scholarship that does not make compromises to entertain. It still manages to hold the reader's interest by the sheer impressiveness of the life it recovers from the shadows of her lifelong seclusion, and her deliberate efforts to keep her work private and unpublished.

The blurb on the dust jacket contends that "Emily Dickinson," is "probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets..." Habegger himself does not go that far. He leaves it to the reader to decide.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emily Dickinson has become impossible for me to avoid, being, as she is, the source from which all modern American flows. This is the first biography I have read about the famous poet. As other reviewers stated, it is detailed, thorough, academic in style. For a first pass at the topic, I might have chosen something more accessible, but never mind. Perhaps Dickinson's singularity simply thwarted my hope of understanding her. As it is, I learned quite a bit: her patriarchal father and withdrawn mother, her sister-in-law's influence on her literary education, her resistance to Christianity (an astonishing achievement in that prominent family), the passion she felt later in life, her ability to control her relationships. Now that I think it over, this was an excellent introduction to Dickinson's life. Highly recommended.

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was tired of this sitting in my room so I made my mind up to read through it this past weekend. So. I did not read super carefully. It certainly seemed well-researched, but I wanted it to be more compelling and endearing. The author sometimes took a bleak view of the intensity of Emily--particularly when it came to Sue. He made it seem like their relationship was largely one-sided. I am a staunch Emily and Sue supporter (forevermore!) so obviously I was never going to love this.

[Kara Whicker · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s one review on here that already explains the biggest problem I have with the biography. It’s that Dickinson struggles to appear in it. But I understand that the author does this for a reason. He goes back in the history of other people’s lives to explain how they got the personality, or job, or status, that impacted Dickinson.

I understand but I also want to say that I don’t need the entire life story of the pastor Dickinson had for about three years when she was 7-10.

I think so many Emily Dickinson Biography’s are so long is because she was such a bright young woman. Even before her teenage years. She was funny and quick with her wit.

It’s not enough to write about her young adult life but also what she had to say as a child:

(All who loved the lord Jesus Christ to remain) “ though now I think had it been all who loved Santa Claus, (to remain) my transports would have been more untimely”

Another quote “the childish assumption that paradise is attainable in a very mundane world”

“To think that we must forever live and never cease to be”

“With the sincere spite of a woman”

“Your letter gave me no drunkenness, because I tasted rum before-“

he ate and drank the precious words-
His spirit grew robust-
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust-
He danced along the dingy days
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book- what liberty
A loosened spirit brings-

“That’s what they call a metaphor in our country. Don’t be afraid of it, sir, it won’t bite”

I almost feel as if the author is trying to tell the audience that Dickinson had homosexual tendencies of which she was forcing onto sue. I don’t like this insinuation. Mostly because we have no idea how Sue responded. There are no records of the letters Emily received in return.

The book made it obvious that Emily had, had these romantic inclinations towards women before. Once with abiah root. So it’s not like Sue is the only object of her homosexual desire.

I wish we had records of how sue responded to letters with lines such as “will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to….or I am fancying so, and dreaming blessed dreams from which the day will wake me? I…. Feel that now I must have you- that the expectation… makes me feel hot and feverish, that my heart beats so fast.”

But I also need to look at the original letter, it’s obvious the author of this biography has changed a bit of the way it was written. Either way I’m not loving how he makes the reader think in a certain direction.

The author almost wants us to think Dickinson is a spoiled and selfish child in her early twenties. She’s praised for being smart and quick as a child but as she reaches adult hood she is nothing but a selfish and over bearing. I can’t even tell if he likes her.

I get the feeling that he wants us to think Dickinson and Susan’s relationship was not as special as it was.

Maybe he’s trying to convey that it was a one sided love between Emily and Susan. Though we will never know because I believe if there was Susan would have burned and gotten rid of any definent evidence.

I think the author is purposely cutting out Dickinsons and Susan love for each other. Turning sweet written letters and twisting them into people of indifference. Does author really believe people who are nothing to each other can write sweet words such as that?

I almost don’t want to finish it because I really don’t know what lies author is telling me and what things about Susan and Dickinsons love he wants me to ignore.

I have one thing to say and it’s that you have to be an idiot not to see the love Dickinson and Susan hold for each other. Through letters and notes they are most defiantly in love. Whether it’s sexual or not.

This is going to be a dnf for now. I couldn’t get through it solely based on the authors willingness to lead their audience astray. Denying Emily and Susan very close friend ship and trying to erase their love for eachother as hard as Mabel loomis Tod did.

I might come back to it when I want to read more of this heavy book but for now I can’t let myself be lied to by a man that looks like a twink.

[Moondog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a fascinating study of Emily Dickinson's life and work, Habegger's biography includes rare insights into the poetry itself, the time and place the poet lived, and the real peculiarities in that peculiar poetic mastery we think we know well.

I doubt I'm alone in thinking Habegger does his strongest work writing about the poems. Tracking the "flowers" that Dickinson often wrote or drafted for her friends and family, Habegger finds in her strange authorial process a basis for unpacking the words with wonderful situational analysis; he skillfully explores the context of her artistry in the small, exclusive world that she imbues with such monumental ideas.

As in a poem, without paying attention to detail, the reader won't get much from this biography; for Habegger, this indicates the good and the bad. His enormous fund of research impresses, but could also overwhelm particularly the unfocused reader or habitual skimmer. He faces the biographer's challenge of apprising readers of vast information, and especially in the beginning, he sometimes overdoes it. The first third of the book sags most because it lays too much groundwork, introducing us to circumstances preceding the poet's birth with some overloaded information about her family and hometown. He introduces us to some figures and information too early to remember them when they become important later.

My own personal qualms won't bother most readers. As he tries to provide a balanced, reasonable look at the societal and familial situations that shaped Dickinson and which she often later harpooned in her best work, I think Habegger fails to give an even hand to the religious side. He often mixes up pure Calvinism with people's personal ideas of it, or with the strange Evangelical hybrids of its tenets recorded in individual sermons or congregations. He tends to conflate the Calvinist God with what were often apparently only Dickinson's fancies about him. As a result, misleading claims about Calvinism often springboard a glittering speculation about Dickinson's troubled and fascinating relationship with religion. It disappoints me as a modern Calvinist to see Habegger oversimplify when he probably intends to convey a rich and complex situation.

Anyone who has enjoyed Dickinson's poetry and wants to enjoy it more should start here, though for shorter attention spans, I recommend the latter two-thirds.

[Catherine Wylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate how well-researched this biography is, though it goes into a great deal of almost boring detail about the lives of those around her and nearly anyone she was exposed to in her relatively reclusive life. Some of the writing around other people was not that pleasant to wade through.

However, it was interesting to learn more about the community and the times in which she lived in New England, and in the midst of a religious culture that seemed to quietly battle between Transcendentalism via the Unitarian church and Evangelicalism. (I actually would have liked to have known more about any influences Transcendentalism might have had on Emily, though maybe there was no record directly exploring such.)

I liked this book due to the extensive and massive research the author put into it. It has very well-documented extant letters from Emily and many others.

While I thought the writing at times was mired down in too much detail about others, I also really emjoyed points of great creativity in writing style and was pleased as the author's exploration of Emily's poems. I actually loved the way he articulated what must have been going in in her inner life and how she handled the complexities of being who she was in the community and times in which she lived.

Overall, I do feel I need to find a different biography now. I just have to know that much nore about her. I would definitely recommend this one for the serious Emily Dickinson scholar.

[Joe Higgins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable! A critical biography that like all bios of the fairly obscure ( during her lifetime ) and reclusive poet, necessarily depends on close reading of her writings to impute the events of her life. This the author does without getting too bogged down in her complex themes, or -worse- inventing evidence for contemporary speculative theories of her personality. For example, the vogue for portraying her as a lesbian. It's interesting of course, but in puritan, conservative Amherst, suppression of women was not limited to their sexuality, so it becomes a bit distracting.

Habegger tends to stick to what can be drawn from the actual record, and in Dickinson's life, that means mostly letters in the early years, then a great burst of poetry from the Civil War era, then letters again later in life. He negotiates the very ambiguous and subtle language and phrasings and sly wit with elegant grace and judicious restraint.

I have limited (physical ) shelf space, so keeping a book in my home- for further consultation- is my highest commendation.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

À total outsider to not only Dickinson but poetry in general, I sought this book after encountering my first ever ED poem in David Duchovny’s novel, “Miss Subways.” The poem was about embers, holding their memory of fire for a thousand years. And I thought, “huh… well that’s… good… words. Maybe I should learn about Emily Dickinson and what made her great.”

That was an entire glacial age ago, which is how long it took me to finish this book. This is, second only to Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger, the most dense text I’ve ever read for “fun.” But! I’m an academic, and I can recognize and appreciate good academic research, examining evidence, providing supporting references to ideas, noting when something is factual or speculation or likely factual based on triangulated speculation… even though it was dense and difficult, there’s no denying this is a good biography.

I think I might have even learned a thing or two about poetry! I certainly learned that her brother was a twat.

[Tegan (Slant Postscripts) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book undoubtably has flaws and some of the interpretations of historical evidence are oddly inflexible for an author all too ready to call out the perceived inaccuracies of others writing about Dickinson. However, because this was my first Dickinson bio I was enthralled and generally found the contextual depth interesting. It isn't particularly easy to read and it is very long. You have to really to want to know about Dickinson and be prepared for highfalutin interpretations of her poems (are there even any other kind?). But for all that it does certainly give scope to the complexities and contradictions inherent in Dickinson. While she may remain elusive, this bio does much to flesh it out. There is an inadvertent (and probably unintentional) embracing of elusiveness in this excess of information that is strangely reverential in a way the ambiguous poet may have appreciated

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really appreciated Habegger's chronological treatment of the life of Emily Dickinson (which seems to me the only rational way to approach a biography, but apparently few of her other recent biographers think so) and his exploration of the biographical evidence is extremely thorough. Overall I found it fascinating to read about the life of such a strange and unusual literary figure, but it's worth noting that Habegger writes much more for academic than lay audiences, and readers without a background in literary and historical academia would probably find the level of detail overwhelming. I certainly felt at times that I was getting more information than anyone other than a Dickinson scholar would need, and at 600 pages it's quite an investment of time and energy for the casual reader.

[jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

As brilliant as she is elusive, Emily Dickinson inspires with her uncompromising love for her family and friends and her unparalleled mastery of the English language. However, as Habeggar attempts to provide a framework in which to view her poems and life, he fails to capture the very essence of who Emily Dickinson was as evidenced by her poetry and extant letters. And while I concede that this is not a simple feat, one can’t help but feel that he lost the forest for the trees. Additionally, his insistence on her romantic affairs with men (namely two, possibly) and then scoffing at her similar, if not more impassioned, letters with women is telling. Habeggar offers a peak through that southerly facing window and nothing more.

[Nancy Jentsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing biography best read with a collection of Dickinson's poems in the other hand. I learned a lot about life in New England in the mid 19th century, and particularly about the power of the Congregational Church. The biography also included many points that are still controversial, which is a little unusual in biographies, but unavoidable in one about a reclusive individual who did not leave a lot of first-hand information. How exciting that a possible second photographic image of her has been found.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anyone picking up this biography will realize how thoroughly the author researched and focused on his subject. But I found three things problematic with this biography: I never felt like Emily Dickinson "came alive" on the page, I found the author unprofessional in his behavior to other Dickinson biographers, and the author is not a particularly good writer. All of which slowed down my reading of this book. I continued because the author provided much detail surrounding the writer's life, which I wanted to learn.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated the author's commitment to avoid speculation. It might be fun to read more sensational accounts of Emily's life and personality, but I wanted to read a balanced account first! It was great learning about the influences that shaped Emily's life and I feel like I understand her better as a person, to the little degree that this is possble :') Be advised that a lot of pages are devoted to describing the lives of her family members. I skimmed some passages about her father and brother just to get it back to the library on time ;) But I still got a lot out of the book as a whole.

[Sandra Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-researched, very academic biography. It’s informative although not a page turner. At times the author seems to be reading too much biography into Dickinson’s poetry, pushing his theories that she was in love with certain men, and scoffing at the idea that she might have been in love with a woman. I recommend reading this in short doses, interspersed with episodes of “Dickinson” on Apple TV. Though lighter, weirder, and obviously fictionalized, it’s much more fun.

[Marna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This did take me a really long time to read (I started it in September) and while it shows a few very obvious biases, the information on Dickinson's family and early life is solid and almost excruciatingly detailed. I feel this is a good place to start and am excited by the idea of reading her from other viewpoints, possibly even looking into a free online course of some kind.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The amount of research that went into this is staggering. I really enjoyed the dive into her parents lives before they met and before she was born, because it added such context to her. I also loved knowing what she read as a child, even if we don't know what she thought of them. But my God is this a slog and I honestly gave up once she hit her 20s, with 3/4 of the book left.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I had read this one before all the way through; I had not. Come for the hilarity of Habegger's dry "not Emily who cares" opinions of almost every other human in her circle, stay for his "this is why other people are wrong about when this poem was written" commentary.

[CHRIS · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poet. Need I say more? What Emily Dickinson has given to the world is beyond words. To me, she is everything. Throughout my life, Dickinsons work will be an echo I won’t ever stop hearing.