The Life of Emily Dickinson

by Richard B. Sewall and Richard Benson Sewall

Book Overview

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, Richard B. Sewall shows us not just the poet nor the poetry, but the woman and her life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674530802
• ISBN13: 9780674530805
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 924 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A great book!

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.

Great for College Courses

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.

We'll never have a better biography of Emily...

Professor Sewall spent about 20 years getting this massive and beautifully presented biography put together, and his scholarship, devotion, persistence and talent shine in every chapter. He used original source material, much of it for the first time anywhere. He describes the lives of many Dickinsons, ancestors and descendants, of the mysterious poet...and getting to know these people helps us comprehend her art and her life. This book came out about l974, and was the first to reveal the now-famous adultery of Emily's brother Austin and Mable Loomis Todd, wife of the Amherst College astronomy professor. This doomed and illicit love lasted 13 years and was a key factor in how and when Emily's poems got published. We didn't get ALL of them until 69 years after the writer died, and Sewall's book tells us why. Professor Sewall hews to common sense in examining Emily's love life, her reclusiveness, and her probable sexual orientation. While he admits that abuse in childhood is possible as a factor in Emily's later choices or limitations, he clearly shows that it is also improbable. I have depended on this work in my own E.D. researches over a 20-year period, and corresponded with the author on and off for about ten years, although I never met him. In my opinion, any study of Emily BEGINS with this book if one wants to do it right. Buy it before it finally goes out of print or you will be sorry. It is a complex and magnificent achievement.

A juicy mammoth of a book!

THE LIFE OF EMILY DICKINSON. By Richard B. Sewall. 821 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press. First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 1994. ISBN 0-674-53080-2Although I haven't yet finished reading Richard B. Sewalls mammoth saga, I fully expect to one day, and I've certainly read enough to realize that this is the single most important biography of Dickinson that we have, and unlikely ever to be bettered. One thing that strikes me is Sewall's wonderful knack of bringing the various actors in this strange domestic drama vividly before us, and making them real and believable. The marvelous collection of illustrations in this book also help make the world of Amherst real to us. The book is comprehensive and a mine of interesting facts about anything and everything to do with Emily Dickinson, and is happily free of the unctuousness of Thomas H. Johnson's earlier biography. Besides being richly illustrated with an abundance of photographs, it is also well-written, incredibly well-researched, and is a pleasure to read, being well-printed on excellent smooth paper. In other words, Sewall's prize-winning biography is essential reading for all students of Dickinson, and is no doubt destined for a wide readership in its compact new paperback format which conveniently gives us Sewall's two volumes in one.

A book for a lifetime

There is a famous sketch by Henry Fuseli called "The artist moved by the grandeur of ancient ruins." It shows a tiny mortal figure weeping beside the fragments of a colossal statue. The reader of Sewall's life of Emily Dickinson will find himself in that mortal's place.This is a book to buy and keep and turn to again and again. Whenever you need to remind yourself what the English language can do, open a page at random and ED will show you. On her own confusion: "I am out with lanterns, looking for myself." On youth: "when I was but an unsifted girl, and you so scholarly." On Shakespearean partings: "I read them in the garret and the rafters wept."Sewall's scholarship is impeccable, his writing graceful, his sympathy and critical engagement exemplary. If you don't own any volumes of Dickinson's poetry, this biography can serve as a "selected works" since it contains many of the poems and letters in their entirety. Don't deny yourself the pleasure of possessing this book.