Open Me Carefully : Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson [Hardcover]

Martha Nell Smith (Editor), Ellen Louise Hart (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

For the first time, selections from Emily Dickinson's thirty-six year correspondence to her neighbor and sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, are compiled in a single volume. Open Me Carefully invites a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship and misinterpretation.

For the millions of readers who love Emily Dickinson's poetry, Open Me Carefully brings new light to the meaning of the poet's life and work. Gone is Emily as lonely spinster; here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive.

"With spare commentary, Smith ... and Hart ... let these letters speak for themselves. Most important, unlike previous editors who altered line breaks to fit their sense of what is poetry or prose, Hart and Smith offer faithful reproductions of the letters' genre-defying form as the words unravel spectacularly down the original page." Renee Tursi, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Emily Dickinson is a figure of intense contradictions: the hermit, the spinster, the frail woman in white who nonetheless wrote poems of almost painfully turbulent passion. For years, biographers have speculated about the male mentor who inspired Dickinson's work, naming intellectual figures like Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Samuel Bowles as possible candidates. As it turns out, however, they might have looked closer to home. For years, both before and after a painful break in their relationship, Dickinson wrote ardent letters to her friend (and eventual sister-in-law) Susan Huntington Dickinson. In fact, she wrote more letters to Susan than to anyone else, despite the fact that at one point Susan lived only a stone's throw away. Like Dickinson's poetry, these letters are a curious business: half epistles, half poems, idiosyncratically capitalized, punctuated, and spaced. They are not merely warm, in the 19th-century way; they are fierce, even erotic, in the kind of attachment they express. Yet editors Ellen Hart and Martha Smith aren't in the business of outing anyone; they prefer to simply present the correspondence in all its passionate oddity. Susan Dickinson was clearly a friend as well as one of the most valued readers of her sister-in-law's poetry--but was she its inspiration, as well? Hart and Smith let the reader decide. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

This intriguing new collection of letters and poems, compiled by two noted Dickinson scholars, reveals a little-known side of one of America's best-loved poets. Documenting a 36-year correspondence between Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, the book does much to negate the popular image of Emily as a mysterious, lonely recluse. In writing filled with warmth, humor, playfulness, and joy, Emily shows her profound attachment to Susan as a friend and as an object of literary inspiration. The romantic and often erotically charged writings, censored or misinterpreted in earlier collections, will surprise many readers. Building upon standard works such as Thomas Johnson's Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), Hart and Smith revise earlier scholarship and provide fresh commentary. Published by a highly selective feminist press that typically produces only two titles per year, this book is an important acquisition for academic and larger public libraries.?Ellen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 362 pages
• Publisher: Paris Press (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963818376
• ISBN-13: 978-0963818379
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,190,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly significant grouping of letters between true peers, January 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paperback)

This collection of letters is essential to Dickinson studies and to anyone interested in the poet. Grouping Emily Dickinson's letters to her sister-in-law, Sue, who was also her best friend and only trusted editor, shows not only how close they were but also makes clear that they were intellectual peers. That is significant because so many of ED's peers did not understand her or did not recognize her importance as an intellectual and as a writer. Sue was fully appreciative of both and was able to engage in written conversation with ED about everything, including poetic advice. ED listened to advice from no one except Sue. The letters are printed as they appear on the written page without any editorial changes. This, too, is significant because it forces us to reread the letters--we have come to know the letters through the editorial work of T.H. Johnson and T. Ward, who regularized sentences and restructured paragraphs. Smith and Hart have wisely left the structure untouched so the effect for us is the same as it was for Sue all those years ago.

The editors are also co-editors of the Dickinson Electronic Archive, in which further evidence of Susan's intellect is available. Their work is just the beginning of a reassessment of Dickinson and her creative process but this work is important and this book is a must for anyone who claims to have an interest in Dickinson, no matter how slight.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emily Dickinson would have loved email, November 20, 2000

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paperback)

This careful collection of amazing letters, and its informative introductions to each section, as well as its coda and notes, reinforces several things that fans of Dickinson likely already believe. Emily Dickinson's reputation was in many ways greatly distorted posthumously by her contemporary Mabel Loomis Todd, late-arriving dragon lady of the Dickinson menage (and eventual mistress of her brother Austin Dickinson, Susan's husband) and originator of "many of the fallacies that have since become Dickinson legend." (p.204) Emily Dickinson was capable of deep and durable friendship. She treasured her own company, and also that of a few close friends. She adored her brother's wife, Susan Huntington Dickinson, who lived next-door in Amherst. The feeling was mutual. They were attached to one another, and utterly loyal. There were no telephones then. Dickinson needed to 'talk' or at least - to write. Some of the letters - mere bits of writing - were on homely topics. I can guess with certainty that were they alive today, they would have thought nothing of communicating throughout the day via email. So we are all of us in good company.

My only mild gripe about this book is the use of the word "intimate" in the subtitle, and the unsubtle choice of the (chaste yet suggestive) photograph by Imogen Cunningham for the cover. This material probably doesn't need to be marketed that way. Dickinson devotees will read this book without the implied promise of sex, and those who don't read Dickinson will be disappointed if they are expecting heated-up correspondence, or in any way sexualized letters from Emily Dickinson to her best friend. These letters are passionate, sometimes playful, and sometimes pedestrian. One reads them for a window on the writer - who was "intimate" with life.

A thoroughly worthwhile read.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is an awakening not unlike the poet herself., January 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Paperback)

The authors are faithful to Emily Dickinson's life, not to a contrived history. Their gentle and sensitive handling of the letters and poems Emily shared with Susan Huntington Dickinson, give the reader insight into Emily's mind and heart. Where we once thought her reclusive, we now know she was exclusive. Because we don't have Susan's letters to Emily, we can never fully know the extent of their love. Still, with what we are given, it is obvious the sensitivity found in Emily was also alive in Susan, and theirs was a mutual love. It is right Susan be given credit for her role in Emily's life. Previous biographers have shied away from telling us that without Susan, we might not have Emily. I believe Susan was not only her editor, but her muse, the person who inspired her words, recognized her brilliance, and supported her work. This book is going to forever change the way we see Emily Dickinson.