Emily Dickinson's Herbarium: A Facsimile Edition

Book Description

In a letter from 1845, the 14-year-old Emily Dickinson asked her friend Abiah Root if she had started collecting flowers and plants for a herbarium: "it would be such a treasure to you; 'most all the girls are making one." Emily's own album of more than 400 pressed flowers and plants, carefully preserved, has long been a treasure of Harvard's Houghton Library. This beautifully produced, slipcased volume now makes it available to all readers interested in the life and writings of Emily Dickinson.

The care that Emily put into her herbarium, as Richard Sewall points out, goes far beyond what one might expect of a botany student her age: "Take Emily's herbarium far enough, and you have her." The close observation of nature was a lifelong passion, and Emily used her garden flowers as emblems in her poetry and her correspondence. Each page of the album is reproduced in full color at full size, accompanied by a transcription of Dickinson's handwritten labels. Introduced by a substantial literary and biographical essay, and including a complete botanical catalog and index, this volume will delight scholars, gardeners, and all readers of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

Customer Reviews:

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium.......2007-09-28

I enjoyed this book very much. It was a thrill to see Emily Dickinson's own handwriting and all the flowers she collected at such a young age. I especially enjoyed seeing the Fringed Gentians and thinking about the poems she wrote about them at a later age.

I was somewhat disappointed in the text. The authors didn't spend much time editing it and making it cohesive. The science section in particular could have had a more detailed description of the wetland prairie habitat in which Emily Dickinson collected the plants.

Overall, I was very pleased with the book. It was beautifully photographed. To describe it as a coffee table book would hardly do it justice. I have lived on a prairie for many years and have seen many of the wildflowers Emily Dickinson has in her "Herbarium". Seeing "Emily Dickinson's Herbarium" has certainly left me with a feeling of intimacy with the poet and her poetry.

A herbarial life.......2007-02-18

Wonderful book, tells much about the author's reluctance to expose herself to the living world.

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library Paperbacks)

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Mostly for the Dickinson Scholar
A good and well-written biography
Academically Valid Without Being Dull
Exhausting and tedious
Read this to know something, but be warned not much is new

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Alfred Habegger
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0812966015
Release Date: 2002-09-17

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

In an excellent literary biography that matches the standard set by his earlier book, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr., Alfred Habegger brings a modern perspective to bear on the life and art of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86) while respecting and lucidly conveying her own distinctively 19th-century views. Like the groundbreaking 1970s feminist reassessments of Dickinson, this text avoids portraying her as a quaint, ladylike homebody (the stereotypical "Belle of Amherst"), and instead stresses her powerful personality and the strategies she employed to transcend the limits placed on her by Victorian society and a domineering father. Even though as an unmarried woman she was expected to stay close to home, Dickinson opted for a life of seclusion, thereby avoiding the social responsibilities foisted upon middle-class women of her day. Habegger does not minimize the fact that Dickinson was a very peculiar woman, particularly as he chronicles the middle years during which her unconventional attitudes hardened into the mannerisms of a local "character." But his primary focus is always on the genius that transformed her personal dilemmas into art. His sensitive, acute handling of her writings, with frequent quotations and careful analysis, fulfills one of the key functions of a literary biography: it makes you want to run out and reread Emily Dickinson's poetry right away. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Mostly for the Dickinson Scholar.......2007-04-20

Habegger's painstaking biography was greeted with awards and high praise, but for the casual reader who simply wants to learn a bit more about the reclusive Emily Dickinson, it's heavy going indeed.

Most of the first half of the 629 pages of text (and I'm not counting the bibliography, references, or genealogical charts!) deals not with Dickinson, but with the social standing and financial affairs of her grandparents and parents, with the political climate of the day, and with other background material that could have well been mentioned only in passing.

Granted, Habegger's task was enormous. Dickinson published only 10 poems in her lifetime, most appearing anonymously and some even against her express desires. She left instructions with her surviving sister to destroy all her writings, both correspondence and poems, and it is by the narrowest chance that the instructions were not followed completely. The biographer is left with the faintest of trails, and points out that some earlier works on the poet's life have been tainted by poor scholarship or lack of impartiality.

Still, the casual reader can only wish Habegger had edited himself more severely, and included more of Dickinson's works. His references to her poems often include just one or two lines, which tasks the reader to chase down the complete works in order to fully understand what is being implied.

The subject of Dickinson's sexuality cannot help but intrude. Habegger handles this with great delicacy and as much honesty as the extant material allows. Dickinson's supposed lesbianism is roundly smacked down, yet in the same breath, he quotes notes Dickinson wrote to her sister-in-law or other women friends using language that the modern reader has no choice but to interpret as erotic. It is difficult for the modern reader to accept that the endearments and references to kisses and embraces don't have a sexual undertone.

The entirety of the work is invaluable to the literary historian, but it's certainly not beach reading.

A good and well-written biography.......2007-04-14

I found Habegger's writing excellent, succinct and, many times, amusing. Having taught a course on Dickson's for many years (described in the Forward), he has an uncanny grasp of the minor characters no one remembers, and it is brought home that these characters are only being examined because they had some link to a strange and increasingly withdrawn poet. The author was able to show the point of view that is missing, Dicken's, which radiated from her obsessive way of relating to others. Her family history is especially interesting, showing an authoritarian and anti-feminist father, the type woman (a drone) her mother was, and the resulting progency, the three children. Enough is included to draw one's own conclusions about the poetess, who may have been caged, but accepted the bars in that cage because put there by her father. In some ways, Emily (to my mind) failed to deliver herself.

Academically Valid Without Being Dull.......2005-05-25

I began this book with trepidation, for I find myself slightly suspicious of literary biographies finding them to be either too sensationalized or reductive or too academic to be interesting to the average reader. This is a well-researched volume that does not read like a doctoral thesis. But Alfred Habegger manages to discover a delightful balance between scholarly research and public readability.
I adore Dickinson and was impressed with the manner in which Habegger handled his subject. He presents her with the complexity and intellectual approach toward she deserves. Emily Dickinson appears as neither the bizarre recluse nor a misunderstood sexual being of some of her previous biographies. If, as some readers have found, the poet appears a bit unresolved and incomplete, it is only because Mr. Habegger wisely chose NOT to sensationalize his book with unsubstantiated presumptions as to her personal life. I enjoyed the author's scholarly, non-sensationalist approach to Ms. Dickinson and found that it did not prevent me from "knowing her" as a person or subject.
One of Alfred Hebeggar's greatest strengths is his realization that no artist exists in a vacuum. He presents to his readers the complex outer world that inspired the poets rich inner world allowing us to draw many of our own conclusions. Meticulously researched and gently paced, the book is a journey not merely a chronicle of a single life. Instead, it is an insightful look at the entire Dickinsonian world of family, academics, and petty town politics. Habegger introduces the reader to the poet's entire extended family and the emotional movement within it. He allows the reader to truly see the social and political environment in which the poet lived. And that is fascinating in its own right.
Overall, I enjoyed the book very much and appreciate Alfred Hebeggar's unique ability to strike a balance scholarship and authorship. He is never condescending, yet he explains thoroughly. He treats the reader as an intelligent person with a mind eager for historical details and biographical accuracy and he treats his subject with respect and intellectual dignity. His book is academically valid without sacrificing the art of solid writing.

Exhausting and tedious.......2005-01-29

I had read a lot of Emily Dickinson's poetry and some brief article biographies of her life before reading this book. So I was looking forward to a book-length biography. I was disappointed. I feel the book could have been edited down to one third or one fourth of it's tedious length. Who really cares about a relative's business dealings? I skipped over those boring pages, trying to find facts on ED's life. I didn't find much.

I feel I can know more about Emily through simply reading her poetry, some of which I still find hard to understand. I admire her for not seeking fame or money through her gift of writing. She was a true artist with words.

Go to this site to read her poetry online: http://www.bartleby.com/113/.

Read this to know something, but be warned not much is new.......2002-08-17

While Habegger does provide some original insight into Edward Dickinson, the majority of this book does not present new evidence or new interpretation. The documentation of sources is done terribly (it barely exists), which is not excusable in someone who is a scholar. I realize this book is not written for a scholarly audience, but with the recent problems Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin have had, Habegger should have been much more careful. For the reader new to ED and wanting to know about her, this book will provide all the usual information. What is troubling is that there is a fair amount of speculative commentary provided that isn't well backed up, especially when it comes to ED's relationships with her sister-in-law and her parents. Quite a few assertions are stated as fact but don't have the evidence to back them up. This is the problem with a lot of Dickinson biographies--biographers (most of them scholars) don't seem to feel that it's necessary to explain that a lot of what they say is speculation and not fact; most casual readers won't know this and take everything that's said as not only fact, but fact provided by someone who really knows what they're talking about. Habegger knows more than many, but his material is not presented in a way that is acceptable scholarship because it's mostly his opinion with some quotations taken out of context.

Amazon.com

Winner of the National Book Award, this massively detailed biography throws a light into the study of the brilliant poet. How did Emily Dickinson, from the small window over her desk, come to see a life that included the horror, exaltation and humor that lives her poetry? With abundance and impartiality, Sewall shows us not just the poet nor the poetry, but the woman and her life.

Book Description

The life of Emily Dickinson, Richard B. Sewall's monumental biography of the great American poet (1830-1886), wont the National Book Award when it was originally publsihed in two volumes. Now available in the one-volume eidtion, it has been called "by far the best and most complete study of the poet's life yet to be written, the result of nearly twenty years of work" (The Atlantic).

R.W.B. Lewis has hailed it as "a major event in Americn letters," adding that "Richard Sewall's biographical vision of Emily Dickinson is as complete as humans cholarship, ingenuity, stylistic pungency, and common sense can arrive at."

Customer Reviews:

A great book!.......2007-09-23

If you are looking to buy just one biography of this great poet, this is the one to buy. Extremely detailed with a lot of period photographs of Emily and her family and friends. The appendixes are full of source documents, including excerpts from personal correspondence. Not easy reading, but well worth the effort. If you really want to know Emily Dickinson, get this book.

Not really a biography.......2006-01-10

I have just read this book and enjoyed it thoroughly. However, the title is somewhat misleading, as this is not a conventional biography. Other than a few chapters on her childhood and early education, the book is arranged in "theme" chapters, each focussing on a particular person or aspect of her life, illustrated, and heavily annotated, with letters and poems related to that theme.

I ended the book with more questions about her life than I had at the beginning. Many of them are barely addressed in the book, or just hinted at. Perhaps the book was intended for readers who are already very familiar with the biographical details.

Just as one example, the author mentions several times the eye problem that led to one of Emily's rare trips away from her home for treatement in Boston. I kept thinking that sooner or later some further details about this eye problem would be revealed, but there was never more than a few widely scattered sentences about it. Perhaps there isn't enough evidence to be able to conjecture as to the nature of the problem, but the author doesn't even seem to think it's an important enough detail to require a weighing of the evidence.

Likewise her mother's long illness, which played a role in Emily's withdrawal from the world, is mentioned but its nature is not discussed, other than a mention that she was paralyzed near the end of her life. Did she suffer a stroke? Was she lucid? Since Emily was her primary caregiver, it would seem that these details might bear on her own emotional state during the years of this illness and would warrant at least some speculation.

Even Emily's own final illness remains a mystery. We learn that her sister blamed it on the ill treatment received from her sister-in-law, and that her doctor attributed it to "nerves". However, from other hints, it seems to be a progessively debilitating illness. There is never as much as a paragraph in the entire book which speculates on the nature of this fatal illness or how much she might have been incapacitated between the first attack in June 1884 and her death in May 1885. "Nerves" seems to me to be an insufficient explanation for the death of the poet after an illness of eleven months. Are we sure the fainting spell was related to the final illness? Was she ill for the entire eleven months? For how long was she bedridden? The author doesn't even pose these questions.

In a book of 821 pages, there is no index entry for "illness". "Death [of ED]" has 7 widely scattered and brief entries, one of which is a footnote, one of which is a 13-sentence entry on how her death affected her brother, one of which is the text of her obituary and three of which describe her funeral(on pages 273, 575 and 667, to show how scattered they are). The seventh entry refers to her obituary, but seems to be a mistake, as I find no mention of her death or obituary on the page cited.

The book is especially good on the life of her brother Austin, and is also good on her father. Her mother and sister remain mysterious, probably because they were not much more exposed to public scrutiny than Emily herself was. It is obvious that her sister was nearly as much of a recluse as Emily, or at least was perceived as such by their neighbors.

In such a scattered book, there is inevitably a good deal of repetition of details. The three mentions of Emily's funeral cited above, for example, are mostly identical. Poems are also quoted in part or in their entirety multiple times.

There is an index of the poems and the pages on which they are discussed, which is useful for understanding the context of some of these, although the author acknowledges that the dating of the poems presents many problems.

There is a chronology at the beginning of the book, which really is the closest there is to a temporal ordering of the poet's life. I would suggest photocopying it and using it as a bookmark, because there is little chronological ordering, even within chapters at times. I found myself asking such things as, "Was this before her brother's marriage or after? Was her father still alive when this happened?" As a matter of fact, because I didn't have the chronology in front of me, I was surprised to realize, when I had almost finished the book, that Emily's father was still alive during the period of her most intense literary activity. After the early chapter devoted to her father's life, he is not often mentioned again, and I had somehow remained with the impression that he had died much earlier in her life.

Much as I enjoyed this book, I am left wanting another book to fill in the gaps. However, I learned enough about the partisanal nature of her biographers to be wary of choosing one.

Find an editor.......2003-12-20

Somewhere among the 800 pages of this tome is a great 250-page biography. Mr. Sewall has assembled a massively detailed account of ED's life. I know presenting myriad detail of a subject's life is the biographer's method for removing themselves from the reader's relationship and experience of the subject, but I find this current trend of unleashing 800 to 1200 page biographies very taxing on the general reader. Although I wasn't completely disappointed in Mr. Sewall's biography, I was hoping for a tighter depiction of ED's life. I'm a general reader, not an academician. I was simply looking for an account of ED's life that would help me better understand her sublime poetry. This book delivered too much matter and not enough essence for me. However, the final chapter of the book entitled "The Poet" was very enlightening and poignantly written. This last chapter deserves 5 stars, the rest of the book 2.

Great for College Courses.......2003-02-06

Emily Dickinson is easily my favorite poet (also see my review on "Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson", which every poetry lover should own). I took a college course that focused on Emily Dickinson and these were the two books used for that course (there were optional books, which I also read, but nowhere near as good as these). The author's analysis of some poems can be questioned (whose cannot?), but the wealth of material presented is incredible. This is THE reference book about her life. So, if you want details about the woman behind the beautiful words, then get this book. Also consider visiting her house in Amherst (MA), which still has tours during the warmer months. All three things will give you a very good look into her writing.

So close yet so far.......2003-01-25

Richard Sewall skillfully amasses a large shuffling pile of letters promising insight into the true Emily Dickinson. Starting the book left me hopeful for great things to come. He methodically, almost puritanically, reviews the lives surrounding and including the Dickinson family piling the letters upon each other. Yet, in the end, what possibly made Emily Dickinson withdraw into her room and from the world? Forced to abandon suitors by her Father, rejection by Sue after a brief gay encounter, agoraphobia? Any and all possibilities are buried under the letters and placed in obscure footnotes at best. Emily Dickinson is possibly the greatest poet from North America, and probably was a Gandhi-like reincarntion for the feminist movement in the United States; yet "The Life of Emily Dickinson" doesn't deliver through Richard Sewall's storm of letters.

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The Life of Emily Dickinson
Richard B. Sewall
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus And Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000BQXHQ2

My life, a loaded gun: Female creativity and feminist poetics

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My life, a loaded gun: Female creativity and feminist poetics
Paula Bennett
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers

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Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers
Mary E. Galvin
Manufacturer: Praeger Paperback
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0275961060

Book Description

Galvin provides a critical look at the intersections between the development of "queer" consciousness and the poetic experimentations of Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and H.D., one that places them in a continuum of non-heterocentric existence. While these writers were non-heterocentric in their personal identities, they were also all innovators of modernist poetics. For lesbians and other non-heterocentrically defined writers, the active creation of identity outside the heterosexual economy demands new ways of writing, and this demand manifests itself not only in content, but also in poetic technique. The basic assumption of this work is that the mind which can imagine other sexual orientations and gender identities can and must also imagine new ways of writing, and that a consideration of the poets' sexualities is central to a fuller understanding of both the message and the medium of their poetic practices. A full-length exploration of the relationship between poetics and queer theory, Queer Poetics presents a theoretical framework that can illuminate not only the ways we read the specific poetic innovations of these six writers, but also the ways we read literary modernism itself, by placing both in a different social and epistemological context--that of "queer" existence. This work is important to scholars and researchers in Women's Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, feminist criticism, and the study of poetry.

Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson

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Very enjoyable
Emily's Visitors

Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson

Manufacturer: University Of Iowa Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0877457395

Book Description

This unique anthology gathers work by eighty poets inspired by Emily Dickinson. Beginning with Hart Crane's 1927 poem “To Emily Dickinson” and moving forward through the century to such luminary Þgures as Archibald MacLeish, John Berryman, Yvor Winters, Adrienne Rich, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Amy Clampitt, William Stafford, and Galway Kinnell, Visiting Emily offers both a celebration of and an homage to one of the world's great poets.

If there was ever any doubt about Dickinson's inßuence on modern and contemporary poets, this remarkable collection surely puts it to rest. Gathered here are poems reßecting a wide range of voices, styles, and forms—poems written in traditional and experimental forms; poems whose tones are meditative, reßective, reverent and irreverent, satirical, whimsical, improvisational, and serious. Many of the poets draw from Dickinson's biography, while others imagine events from her life. Some poets borrow lines from Dickinson's poems or letters as triggers for their inspiration. Though most of the poems connect directly to Dickinson's life or work, for others the connection is more oblique.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE
Marvin Bell
Lucy Brock-Broido
Amy Clampitt
Toi Derricotte
Lynn Emanuel
Donald Hall
Edward Hirsch
Galway Kinnell
Maxine Kumin
Archibald MacLeish
Kathleen Norris
Sharon Olds
Alicia Ostriker
Ron Padgett
Linda Pastan
Molly Peacock
Donald Revell
Adrienne Rich
William Stafford
Richard Wilbur
Charles Wright
Ray Young Bear

Customer Reviews:

Very enjoyable.......2001-02-11

The collection is inspired and intriguing. The range of emotions created in readers by the poetry of Emily Dickinson is demonstrated through the variety of thematic works presented. From the humorous (Emily Dickinson Attends a Writing Workshop, and Emily Dickinson's To-Do List) to the introspective (The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson), to the wishful (Emily Dickinson, Bismarck and the Roadrunner's Inquiry)--each gem is carefully chosen by the authors. If the reader is not familiar with Dickinson's work, this book will inspire a thorough reading of her poems. For those who know her work, the recognition of the power of her work will bring knowing smiles and memories. A note to the previous reviewer: the Billy Collins' poem, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, is included in the collection (p. 13-14).

Emily's Visitors.......2000-12-11

An interesting thematic collection that sometimes is a homage to Emily and at other times (As in X.J. Kennedy's poem) gently pokes at the Emily cult. It seems that almost all poets pass through her writing at some point and at least take a sip if not a full glass. They really should have included Billy Collins' poem "Undressing Emily" which is funny, sad and, I think, lovingly done.

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The hidden life of Emily Dickinson
John Evangelist Walsh
Manufacturer: Simon and Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press)

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A psychoanalytic reading of ED's tortured life.

After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press)
John Cody
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Life of Emily Dickinson

ASIN: 0674008782

Customer Reviews:

A psychoanalytic reading of ED's tortured life........2001-06-22

AFTER GREAT PAIN : The Inner life of Emily Dickinson. By John Cody. 538 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. SBN 674-00878-2 (hbk.)

This book is a fascinating psychoanalytic reading of ED's tortured life, by a professional psychiatrist who devoted seven years to it, and is unsparing of the falsifications indulged in by most of her biographers and critics. ED cultists, in particular, loathe the book (always a good sign) because it gives us a very human and very tormented Emily Dickinson, a woman starved for love who had serious psychological problems which retarded her emotional development, and who almost certainly suffered a nervous breakdown as a result.

Why any of this should disturb the open-minded I have no idea. The Dickinson household was certainly a very strange and abnormal place, and the Dickinson children had a far from normal upbringing. The aloofness of the father, his inability to show love or warmth and relate in a normal fashion to his children, would have a devastating effect on any child.

The arguments I have seen against Cody have been very weak, though proof of the rightness of his thesis is very strong. It runs all through the poems and has been analyzed in great detail by Camille Paglia in Chapter 24 of her _Sexual Personae_ 'Amherst's Madame de Sade : Emily Dickinson' (pp.623-74).

The poems Paglia quotes are authentic Dickinson poems. No matter how much worshippers at the shrine of their 'Saint Emily' would like to wish them away, they will not go away. Also, they have meaning.

My advice would be to read both Cody and Paglia. They're both fascinating writers, they both know what they're talking about, and I think that what they say helps us to understand aspects of both Dickinson and many of the poems she wrote.

Emily Dickinson was a very complex figure, and everyone tries to claim her for their camp - Cultists, Christians, Psychiatrists, Sadeians, etc., - but I guess the truth is that, although there's a certain amount of truth in all these positions, Emily Dickinson is just too big to be contained. She bursts free of all categories. Like her poems she explodes into a multiplicity of meanings, perhaps because, like them she wasn't about something, but about everything.

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The Belle of Amherst..a Play Based on the Life of Emily Dickinson
William Luce
Manufacturer: Houghlin Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JK3SDW

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