Description
Book SynopsisThis book uncovers the process by which the conventional portrait of Emily Dickinson was drawn and offers readers a chance to go back to original letters and poems and look at the poet and her work through new eyes.
Trade Review. . . original and provocative . . . Martha Nell Smith convincingly answers those who continue to ask why Dickinson did not publish more while she was alive. The author also offers a revisionist interpretation of the relationship between the poet and her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, whose role in both the poetic process and subsequent publication of Dickinson’s work she contends is much more significant than critics to date believe. * Belles Lettres *
Table of Contents
- Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Sources
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. To Fill a Gap: Erasures, Disguises, Definitions
- 2. Rowing in Eden: Reading Dickinson Reading
- 3. All Men Say “What” to Me: Sexual Identity and Problems of Literary Creativity
- 4. With the Exception of Shakespeare: Reconstructing Dickinson’s Relationship with Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson
- 5. To Be Susan Is Imagination: Dickinson’s Poetry Workshop
- 6. Fame is a Fickle Food: “Sister Sue” as Producer of Poems
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
