Customer Reviews

The Life of Emily Dickinson

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

THE LIFE OF EMILY DICKINSON. By Richard B. Sewall. 821 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press. First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 1994. ISBN 0-674-53080-2

Although 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.

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.

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.

I was surprised to find this book so highly rated by other reviewers. I found it frustrating--Mr. Sewell spends a great deal of time and effort telling about different theories for events in Emily Dickinson's life, and then telling the reader that "I don't think that can be true". However, he never seemed to give any of his own answers to this enigmatic life. This is the first biography I have read about ED, and I come away greatly puzzled . . .

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.

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.

Richard Sewall concieves of E.D.'s life as intrinsic to her poetry. Her relationships with family and friends provide context for her amazing output.

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.