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Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds

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Reading the reviews below reminds me that there are no feuds as acrimonious and petty as academic ones. Apparently, a disagreement between Lyndall Gordon and other Dickinson biographers regarding whether Dickinson had epilepsy has inspired those dissenting biographers to trash her book on Amazon.com. Did Gordon have the temerity to disregard their advice? Well, we'll have none of that; in the interests of scholarship (yeah, sure) we'll make sure that the world knows how right we were, and how wrong she was to ignore our criticism.

Now -- the book. Lyndall Gordon has written a fascinating account of the feud between the Dickinsons and Mabel Loomis Todd, the extramarital lover of Dickinson's brother, that delayed the publication of much of Dickinson's work for over 50 years. Extending through two generations, and possibly a contributing factor in the deaths of some of the players, the feud began when Dickinson's brother, Austin, embarked on a mid-life, adulterous romance with Todd, the young wife of an Amherst science professor. As Dickinson's poems and letters lay hidden away in the pages of books, locked trunks, and dust-filled boxes, the protagonists of this extraordinary tale battled for recognition and vindication and -- not incidentally -- to destroy one another's claims to Emily Dickinson's affections

Gordon describes, not merely the feud, but also the way in which the competing narratives spun by the adversaries -- including the putative "editors" of Dickinson's work, her betrayed sister-in-law, Susan and her sister, Lavinia, and the actual editor, Mabel Todd -- misrepresented their own characters and motives, and also those of the poet herself, who had an emotional vitality and network of relationship that belied the myth of the frail recluse of Amherst. Public attitudes, Gordon demonstrates, played an active role in such dramas, eagerly embracing the myth of the "frail" and emotionally chaste Dickinson and, during a trial in Amherst in the years after Dickinson's death, thwarting the adulterous Mabel Todd's attempts to have her rights to a portion of Dickinson land validated. Gordon shows that, in life as in literature, there is no "binary right or wrong, guilty or not guilty," (p. 312), and that truth is elusive and must be approached inclusively, taking into account the stories that individuals tell, and often believe, about themselves and one another.

Perhaps that is the lesson that those who criticize Gordon's scholarship might learn. True, Dickinson may not have been an epileptic. Taking all the factors that Gordon describes into account, however, some sort of seizure disorder might have been included among her ailments. Certainly, the theory is plausible, and provides readers (including this one) with an additional, intriguing interpretation of Dickinson's poems. Yet the nature of Dickinson's illness is not what this book is about. Instead, the book is about the enduring power of art, emotion, and need: a great poet's work is nearly swallowed up by, but survives, a love that is so powerful that it gives rise to an everlasting hatred -- a hatred so powerful that it creates a perverse kind of art -- narratives -- of its own.

As a college instructor and a practicing attorney, I found this work on Dickinson enjoyable on many levels, and give it "five stars." How ironic that a book about a feud should spark antagonisms that, in their own way, prove the author's points.

As a Dickinson biographer of fifty years, one oft parahrased in Lyndall Gordon's sensational take on Dickinson's life, I would add to Hirschhorn's authoritative report on epilepsy that Gordon misrepresents another "epileptic" in her book. Identifying the illness in Zebina Montague, second cousin to Dickinson's father, strengthens her argument that the disease ran in the Dickinson family. However, Montague was a paralytic, not an epileptic. Having suffered a crippling stroke in his early thirties, he remained partially paralyzed the rest of his long, far-from-reclusive, life. In nineteenth century Amherst epilepsy wasn't the dread secret Ms Gordon would have us believe. Dickinson family records mention that Emily's nephew Ned suffered from the disease, as did another child in town, yet nowhere is there evidence the poet was afflicted until this new biography, where the condition serves to reinterpret poems and explain why Emily Dickinson never married. Gordon has written a number of fine biographies, but may have overexerted herself in this one.

Lyndall Gordon's biography of Emily Dickinson is operatic in scope (John Adams, take note). But equally dramatic is her diagnosis of epilepsy, based almost entirely on a misunderstanding of Nineteenth Century pharmacotherapy -- a subject I am well versed in. Gordon found an 1874 formula for epilepsy that contained chloral hydrate, glycerine and peppermint. Since Dickinson took glycerine in 1851-54, Gordon assumed that glycerine was the active ingredient, and used the diagnosis to `explain' Dickinson's reclusion, and to reinterpret many of Dickinson's poems and relationships.

In fact, the active ingredient in the formula was chloral hydrate, an anti-convulsant first used in 1870, which Dickinson, to anyone's knowledge, never took. In no pharmacopoeia, textbook of medicine or specialty text on epilepsy written in the 19th century was glycerine ever mentioned for epilepsy; neither in a book by the physician who treated her. Glycerine was used externally as a lotion; internally to disguise the taste of acrid drugs (like chloral hydrate); and -- in Dickinson's case -- as a supposed nutritive against tuberculosis (consumption), which Dickinson's doctor may have suspected (see my website for the essay, "Was it Tuberculosis?"). Dickinson even recommended the medicine to her brother for his cough.

I shared my new research on this matter with Lyndall Gordon, which she acknowledged receiving, when the book first came out in Great Britain; I hoped she would correct the error in time for the US edition. I regret to say she hasn't. There have been too many potted theories about Dickinson that trivialize the poet and her remarkable -- if still mysterious -- persona to allow this one to go by without complaint.

Norbert Hirschhorn MD
[...]

By which I mean to say, the extravagantly-gifted Gordon does justice to the extravagantly-gifted poet. I was worried, too. I loved Gordon's "Vindication" passionately, but Dickinson is a Sphinx. I love Gordon's championing of "domestic values," her intuitive and empathetic approach, which allows her to possess knowledge of her subjects that seems magical; she always confirms in me the role of empathy in the highest forms of intelligence.

I am grateful to Gordon for redeeming "Sue" and for redeeming ED from the horrible speculative stuff on agoraphobia and avoidant personality disorder and blah-blah, none of which ever made sense to me in the context of ED's poetry; epilepsy, however, enhances and fits with ED's work.

Then, there is the pleasure of reading a biographer who inserts her own arresting thoughts and opinions, sometimes so arrestingly, they swerve one from the subject. Mabel is like a "furry little dog with doggy brown eyes" in her engagement photo, and then there's her home with its "ostrich plumes, ragged with age...tucked behind a nondescript painting of a seashore." No one could make adultery as nauseatingly gritty--almost in a Chekhovian way--and I love the description of Caro, "her rump encased in a striped black taffeta skirt. It rustled as she walked." Do you ever find that ED's poetry is so powerful, reading it stilts your own speech and writing--you start using too many dashes? Sometimes I wonder if the ED-effect got to Gordon: "He was long and lean...a full jaw like a whale. He had the communicative skills of whales, and sang his whale song to Millicent about caring for his kind. It reverberated benignly through her solitary sea." I don't even know what that means, but I still like it.

Gordon implies that epilepsy was "a lifelong condition" for Dickinson. But questions abound. If epilepsy is the reason for Dickinson's seclusion ("A seizure can happen with little warning: about a minute. Too short a time to take cover. That is why those who keep the condition secret would fear to go out, even to join callers in the parlour," Gordon writes) then how does Gordon account for Emily's stay away from home at Mount Holyoke in 1847-48? Or her five weeks away from home in 1855, in Washington D.C. (where Emily records that "many sweet ladies and noble gentlemen have taken us by the hand and smiled on us pleasantly") and Philadelphia? If, as Gordon notes, a stigma attaches to epilepsy, then why would Edward Dickinson, winding up two years in Congress, expose an epileptic daughter to Washington's social swirl?

Emily and her sister Lavinia Dickinson visited Dr. James Jackson in Boston in 1851, when Emily was 20. Gordon assumes that the doctor diagnosed epilepsy, and that his prescription, glycerine, was "a crucial clue." Why does Gordon tell us that Dr. Jackson "has a chapter on epilepsy" in Letters to a Young Physician (1855), but not of Jackson's stated belief in that chapter that "relief" from epilepsy "is not to be attained by any medicine to which I am acquainted, but by diet. The diet, which I have directed with success, has been almost purely vegetable. I have directed an entire abstinence from flesh and fish, but have allowed the use of milk and butter, and occasionally of eggs . . . I have seen many recoveries." Note: In his 1855 Letters and in his 1861 sequel, Another Letter to a Young Physician, Dr. Jackson never once uses the word "glycerine." (The earliest Gordon could find glycerine listed as an ingredient in a remedy aimed at epilepsy was the year 1874, a quarter century after Emily's visit to Dr. Jackson).


Early in her book, Gordon, quite rightfully, congratulates Dickinson's most recent biographer, Alfred Habegger, for his "factual portrait," his "enormous detective flair," his "ability to track down verifiable facts." Why does Gordon then proceed to run roughshod over Habegger's findings and judgments on matters of health? Habegger was certain Dickinson "had several pulmonary episodes as a girl," and that her 1851 visit to Jackson was due to her "pulmonary tuberculosis, two of her symptoms being weight loss and a cough," a repeat of the health crisis she had experienced at Mt. Holyoke on 1848. Without mentioning Habegger, Gordon supplies this breezy analysis: "What made Emily ill? Why did the physicians come back so frequently? . . . In the spring of 1848, when she was seventeen, she joked about a fading cough . . . yet a cough sounds too slight to warrant her father's alarm. Critical opinion that she had `pulmonary episodes' stretches thin facts; most inhabitants of Amherst would have had the odd cough without interrupting their lives." Here, Gordon is flat wrong. The 1850 U. S. Census reveals that in the five counties of western Massachusetts 1 out of every 4 deaths was due to consumption (TB). Death from TB jumped to 50% for those dying between the ages of 20 and 49. Dickinson biographers report that in the early 1850s thirty-three young adults in the village of Amherst succumbed to disease, almost all of them from pulmonary tuberculosis.

Gordon asserts, repeatedly, that Dickinson was deceitful and manipulative in her letters: "The poet, as an adult, was not tubercular, on any evidence we have . . . To go on what her letters give out, as though an answer were at hand, is to block off the mystery." Habegger assigns more integrity to Dickinson's letters, and suspects the presence of TB even as late as her so-called Master Letter #2, written in 1861 when the poet was 30 years old. Habegger: "As Dickinson drifted out to sea in winter of 1860-61, she suffered her usual (consumptive?) symptoms - a `cough as big as a thimble,' `a Tomahawk in my side'." [That passage in full reads: "I've got a cough as big as a thimble - but I dont care for that - I've got a Tomahawk in my side but that dont hurt me much."] Gordon's analysis of Dickinson's Master Letter #2 omits any reference to "I've got a cough as big as a thimble," and instead invents a cruel encounter between Emily and Master: "`Master' appears responsible for a `gash' and drops of blood from Daisy's body . . . Daisy is not really cowed . . . the moment arrives for a dramatic gesture: she uncovers a weapon. `I've got a Tomahawk in my side.' It now comes out that so long as she's been brave enough to conceal the tomahawk, Master has been taking advantage; `Her master stabs her more.' The tomahawk and blood suggest a virgin's defloration."

Gordon acknowledges Habegger for his "feats of corrective research," but in placing epilepsy at the center of Dickinson's life, Gordon trades in Habegger and 70 years of Dickinson scholarship for an approach that is not nearly as rigorous or as reliable. There is a sad irony in the first pages of Lives Like Loaded Guns, where Gordon airily dismisses the "early biographers" of Emily Dickinson who, she writes, "got lost in the byways of fancy."

As a former English grad student, I closed this book (after going through the Sources, Notes, and Indices) with a "Wow!"
Lyndall Gordon has written a very compelling account of feuds within the Dickinson family and how those were carried forward and intensified after Emily's death by Susan Dickinson's and Mabel Loomis Todd's daughters. The book presents clear and convincing evidence for the conclusions drawn, citing Dickinson and Todd papers, medical records, trial proceedings, editions of Dickinson's poetry and publications. It provides a rich social history background of New England individualism, vivid details on the Dickinson's Homestead and The Evergreens, and a vivid portrait of a real Emily Dickinson with unique creative genius. And it's a good read, no matter how you feel about academics.

There is no shortage of Dickinson biographies in the world, but I was attracted to this because it is new and because it has a pretty cover, with a coloured - coloured! - daguerreotype of Emily on the front. When a publisher goes to the trouble of colouring the only known portrait of an enigmatic poet, I assume it's because the writer has something colourful, and possibly new, to say about her. This book fulfils in some ways and frustrates in others.

Gordon does contribute some new and controversial ideas about Emily Dickinson (which I'll address later), but the image on the cover is somewhat misleading. This is not exactly a biography. The subject is the ownership of Dickinson's poems - the publishing rights, the profits, the original copies. Gordon's text follows the poems, not the poet, which leads us down some tangential - and sometimes terrifically boring - paths.

The book focuses almost exclusively, though not chronologically, on Emily (and to some extent her brother, sister and sister-in-law). Her childhood is barely touched on - Gordon is interested in her early adulthood, the point when she went into seclusion, and the point when she began to write poetry, in no particular order. In fact, this first third of the book is a confusion of biographical detail interspersed with critique of the poetry, not always seamlessly. Gordon's writing is sometimes lovely, sometimes awkward, and occasionally pretentious and affected. I think she has unconsciously absorbed some of the idiosyncratic habits of her subject, so Gordon's prose sometimes sounds, ineffectively, like Dickinson's poetry. Some examples:

"Dickinson myth posits a wraith who is singular, but what if we tracked `the bolt' into the plurality of family...?"

"Dickinson demolished feats of heroism: no golden fleece, and Jason a sham".

"Sue, she said, looking back from their fifties, had shared the sense of `Infinity'; had been infinity."

"...Emily menaced the babe of poor Mrs Bowles if she refused to condone the way that Emily's letters - one in particular, not meant for wifely eyes - came whirling into her domestic fastness, determined to lasso her husband."

Wraiths? Fleeces? Infinity? Lassos? A good editor should have smoothed out these wrinkles, and also encouraged Gordon to signpost her direction better in the introduction, because I really wasn't sure where she was going, and had to keep revising my opinion about what genre I was in. Nevertheless, this first third of the book is compelling, because the subject is fascinating, and Gordon does write sensitively and enthusiastically about Dickinson. Emily's friendship with Sue is addressed here too, though it stops short of being really penetrative.

Suddenly, Mabel Loomis Todd arrives on the scene, and the story shifts so abruptly it feels like a different book. Emily is all but left behind, and her death is mentioned incidentally and without pause, which was confounding after I had invested so much emotionally in the goings-on at the Dickinson Homestead in the first part of the text. Mabel and Austin take centre stage here, and Sue is now one-dimensional, hovering disapprovingly in the background. How did she handle Emily's death? How did she manage childbirth, of which she had a mortal fear? Even Ned and Martha are barely mentioned until they are adults, though the early death of little Gib is addressed. Gordon does, however, champion Sue against the criticisms of Mabel and Austin, and suggests Emily's sympathies, too, lay with her sister-in-law.

Polly Longsworth's `Austin and Mabel' is the definitive account of that relationship, a superior text and a highly recommended read for academics and gossips alike. While Longsworth appropriately suspends moral judgment of her subject, Gordon is less sympathetic toward Mabel. I appreciate this - I've never liked Mabel, and I find it refreshing to be agreed with. On the one hand, I think she was clever, prodigiously talented, idealistic and worthy of study. On the other hand, she was an interloper; a potential bunny-boiler with a kooky grin and crazy eyes, a social climber, a land-grabber, an opportunist. More `accomplished' than `gifted', she seduced Emily's sister-in-law's husband, took on editing of the poems after Emily's death and used them to fulfil her own ambitions. Though she condemned Sue for her `low birth', she was really nobody herself, elevated only by her creativity, her flair, and her popularity (note: by these tokens, Sue was just as classy, if not more so, because she was sober, intellectual and loved by Emily). Mabel was creative sexually too, and justified her involvement with Austin because she believed herself superior to his wife, and invested with a divine approval so magnificent it eclipsed the legal and ecclesiastical covenant of marriage. In fact, as Gordon stresses, Mabel explicitly sought to supplant Sue as Mrs Dickinson: Editrix and Landowner. The only thing of Sue's she didn't want were her children. Mabel lived for the adoration of men, neglected her daughter Millicent, and then dragged her into her own tedious legal battles, which Millicent persisted with long after her mother's death in a desperate attempt to win the approval denied her in childhood. I'm sorry, I just don't like Mabel. However, she did present Emily Dickinson's poetry to the world, so I'm [begrudgingly] grateful for that, and I do have some admiration for her as an industrious, ambitious woman who didn't like housekeeping and virtually had a career.

Austin's death is almost as flippantly glossed over as Emily's, as the story shifts yet again to the legal battle over the Dickinson meadow and the poems themselves. Each successive story obscures the former, so the momentum is constantly interrupted. This is where things get boring, no matter how hard Gordon tries to step up the action with melodramatic prose:

"Lexington Avenue, New York. Late September, 1948. In the shadows before dawn a man turns over Dickinson's papers."

"Silence as the two men confront each other, a verbal high noon at midnight. Silence. And then..."

Bill McCarthy, a legal man with a stake in Dickinson's legacy that I can't explain because I wasn't engaged enough to actually follow the story, is not very interesting. In fact, Millicent and Martha are not very interesting, living as they both did in the shadow of their mothers and aunts. Frankly, at this point in the book, all the interesting people are dead. Emily herself is a long-forgotten ghost. Following Mabel, Millicent and Mattie (so alliterative I was constantly confused) as they squabble over the finer points of legal contracts and race to publish various volumes is frustrating and, as Gordon herself points out, as interminable and convoluted as the case of `Jarndyce and Jarndyce' in Bleak House. The difference is, Dickens doesn't require us to follow that in too much detail.

I'm a cynical reader, but there are two things I like very much about this book. Firstly, Gordon's reframing of Emily's invalidism and confinement; secondly, her rereading of Sue. Curiously, I was researching Dickinson myself some years ago when I suddenly contracted a severe neurocardiovascular illness which has confined me to the house ever since. Consequently, I have revised my already sympathetic view of Emily as an invalid.

Gordon controversially suggests that Emily had epilepsy. The suggestion appears out of place, given that this is not a biography per sae. It has everything to do with Emily and her poetry, little if anything to do with Mabel and the posthumous legal battles. As others - including biographer Polly Longsworth and researcher Norbert Hirschhorn - have noted in Amazon reviews for this book, the epilepsy diagnosis is probably not well-founded. Gordon's diagnosis would perhaps have been better posited in a paper, more thoroughly researched and cautiously presented. It's somewhat sneaky to slip it into the midst of a big book, without addressing in enough detail the seminal research of other biographers or presenting enough evidence to persuade the reader, and then to continue to refer to it throughout as probable fact.

That said, I like the idea, and I think Gordon's intentions are good. In his Amazon review, Hirschhorn says "There have been too many potted theories about Dickinson that trivialize the poet and her remarkable -- if still mysterious -- persona to allow this one to go by without complaint." As a ghostly invalid myself, I don't think such theories about Dickinson's health trivialise her - I think they vindicate her. Her genius is remarkable, not her illness. I'm sure Hirschorn would agree that no diagnosis could explain away her remarkable character.

In this book Emily comes across not just as wild, idealistic and passionate, but as a woman with her wits about her: sensible, pragmatic, supremely well-adjusted. Even her personal eccentricity would not be diminished by a diagnosis of organic illness. She's interesting, clever, worldly, and a rare poet. The pressure cooker of confinement and chronic illness gave Emily's writing a peculiar potency, but she would have been just as vivid a character if she were well. Let's not brand her a hysteric, or as Lisa Simpson declares, "crazy as a loon". I always resent the implication that chronic illness is a feminine quality; a character trait. Gordon writes, "[Emily] could not be responsible for ...the `sickness' that determined a homebound life". The idea that Emily was merely confined to the home for pragmatic reasons appeals to me, as does Gordon's dismissal of the suggestion sometimes levelled at Emily Dickinson (and Jane Austen, and Louisa May Alcott, and Beatrix Potter, and some of the Bronte's) of bitter, covetous spinsterhood. After all, most women writers were confined to the home to some extent at this time, as wives, mothers and housekeepers. Gordon likewise undercuts our obsession with the identity of Emily's "Master" by implying either that he is God, or an alter-ago of sorts, or that it simply doesn't matter. Indeed, Emily's Secret Boyfriend is of little interest compared with the love of her life, her poetry; published and promoted for everyone to examine.

Gordon is a biographer, not a Dickinson scholar, so she is cheeky to suggest that Millicent Todd Bingham "appointed" Richard B Sewall to write a biography with "Todd bias", who in turn "appointed" Polly Longsworth to edit Austin and Mabel's letters. These are independent, highly regarded scholars who have ploughed through mountains of documents to present persuasive and scrupulously researched biographical material to an interested audience. It simply doesn't do to snub them, or to write them off as propagandists.

However I do admire Gordon's attempt to champion Sue - poor Sue! - in light of a perceived Todd bias. Emily loved Sue, and that is enough to suggest we haven't plumbed the depths of her redeeming qualities. Gordon sensitively demonstrates Sue's dogged determination to build a home for herself, to derive an income and forge a path all her very own as a teacher, to find happiness and to be intellectually and creatively challenged. It's no wonder Emily found a kindred spirit in her. Sue married reluctantly, and gave birth reluctantly, and her reluctance is no harder to understand than Mabel's enthusiasm. She made the most of marriage, transforming her home into an amphitheatre of culture and debate. For all her puritanical repression, she was devoted to Emily, and had an appetite for her wild poems. Gordon sees all this in Emily Dickinson's sister-in-law, and the encouragement to rethink Sue is an aspect of this book that I like.

After a few chapters have set the stage, this book becomes very gripping right to the end. The author has extensively researched Emily Dickinson's papers and other supporting data. Her detective work uncovers many interesting details.

In the past many ED biographers based their biographical information on heresay, or on the false testimony of so-called witnesses. Several factions within the family and on the periphery of the family wanted to own Emily Dickinson or to be a part of her fame. One feels that there was certainly something very special and attractive about her, for so many to want to make their claim. This author exposes many falsehoods, their origins and consequences.

There were so many dramas unfolding within the drama of Emily Dickinson's supposedly quiet, tranquil life, that the shock waves have lasted for generations.

I particularly liked ED's simple clear insightful responses to Mabel Loomis Todd's intrusions and her comments to/about other members of Mrs Todd's family. Emily Dickenson insights about people were very clear and perceptive. And in the case of Mrs Todd, her insights showed great prescience.

Whether the authors speculation that ED had some form of epilepsy is true or not, may be in question. But it did propose an interesting theory. And the quotes related to this hypothesis brought out interesting information. I never knew that ED spent the times between 3AM and Noon awake every night.(As many mystics throughout the ages have) Some of her experiences of so called "fits" were spiritual experiences. It reminds me of the experiences of seizures that St. Teresa of Avila had...uncomfortable and yet spiritually transforming.

Until I read this book, I knew virtually nothing about Emily Dickinson other than the fact that she was a reclusive, 19th century poet whose work was highly acclaimed. Reading various other reviews here, I realize that there are apparently many Dickinson schalars who take umbrage at some of the divergent views of the poet. Like most biographers of long dead subjects - especially one so reclusive - there is much supposition and detective work involved in any biography. Curiosity aroused by the book led me to research Dickinson on Wikipedia where I found a very lengthy essay about her life and poetry. Much of it correlated with Gordon's work, naming people & incidences familiar from the book.

Some salient facts: Emily Dickinson was plagued by unnamed periods of ill health throughout her life. Gordon makes a good case for epilepsy - which would have qualified as a reason for her mysterious withdrawal from society, especially if the seizures became more frequent. Her family largely recognized her genius early on and did not discourage her. I suppose poetry was deemed a satisfactory pursuit for a genteel Victorian lady.

It is about half way through the book, after Emily's death, that things take a dramatic and quite lurid turn. It seems that the entire family 'took a viper to its bosom' in the lovely form of one Mable Loomis Todd, who proceeded to seduce the entire family with her charm and finally - literally - seduce Emily's brother. The feud between the brother's wife and children and her brother and his mistress and her family was apparently long and bitter and its effects proceeded well into the twentieth century. What is amazing is that Emily's work survived. It had been parceled out into caches in the custody of the various warring factions - some of it unavailable until decades after her death. I would assume that only the hope of great financial rewards kept it from destruction. Most of the poems that did come to light were heavily edited to conform to prevailing notions of proper form and the poet's intentions were circumvented till much later editions published from the original copies. This would have been a formidable project since the poet wrote her poems on any scraps of paper she happened to pick up. Only a few had any form of organization.

Gordon's scholarly treatment and research are thorough but two things make it a bit of a dense `read'. In the early portions of the book, the author seemed to frequently lapse into language that would be used by educated mid-19th century women. Perhaps she experienced what I call the `Immersion Syndrome'. It may have been a total immersion in the era that inspired the author's language, particularly since she often quotes lines from Dickinson's poems and letters. Toward the end of the book, the account of the machinations of the many various competing factions seeking control of Dickinson's papers tends to become repetitious. Certainly, by its nature, it was complicated - many different groups and personalities were involved.

As an account of the manners and mores of the era and in its account of Emily Dickinson's life, I found the book interesting and thought provoking and would recommend 'Lives Like Loaded Guns'.

It's unfortunate that so much attention has been given to the epilepsy controversy in the lead reviews here. It takes up such a minor percentage of this book and should not dissuade future readers. The author examines and successfully reconstructs so many stray facts about the Dickinson family's life...almost to the point of minutiae so that it took 150 pages for me as a reader to become engaged. I see her research and conclusions as a real cautionary tale about how the self-indulgence, vanity and selfishness of a pair of lovers went on to co-opt the future happiness/health of their offspring well into the 2nd generation of this family. Austin Dickinson, a renowned leading citizen of Amherst, conducted his affair with Mabel Loomis Todd within clear view of his family and well within the family compound of two adjoining homes. There was no pretense to hide anything or even consider the feelings of family or servants.

The vain coquette Mabel never grew tired of vilifying Sue Dickinson, Austin's long-suffering wife, perhaps as a lame justification for exerting her wiles over Austin year after year. When public opinion came into question-about the only thing she feared-she'd high tail it out of town for a while. Meanwhile, her own husband was complicit and encouraged the affair. And yet Todd performed an important task as Emily's editor successfully bringing her poetry into the public domain. Yet the shadow of the scandal lingered over everything for many decades after Mabel's death. It's not even very well understood today as Todd's propaganda about Sue continues to linger. Emily continues to come across as a true eccentric-epilepsy or no epilepsy. And while I know that attitudes towards animals were different in the 19th century, I was shocked to read that Emily deliberately drowned 4 kittens in a barrel of pickle brine in the cellar of her home and then left them to rot there(332).Great poet perhaps but not a real sensitive or kind human being. Worth the read.