emily dickinson's intimate letters to susan huntington dickinson

In 1853 she and Austin Dickinson were engaged, and then married July 1, 1856, in the Van Vranken home, 'a quiet wedding,' with 'very few friends and brothers & sisters, a little cake a little ice cream' (Leyda 1:342). From that time until the late 1840s, when she came to live in Amherst with her sister Harriet and brother-in-law William Cutler, Susan was reared by her aunt, Sophia Arms Van Vranken, in Geneva, New York, and attended Utica Female Academy in nearby Utica, New York. By the time she was eleven years old, Susan was orphaned, her mother dying in 1837 and her father in 1841. Susan was the youngest of six children, born between 18 to Thomas and Harriet Arms Gilbert. 1 Born nine days after Emily Dickinson on December 19, 1830, about ten miles away from Amherst in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, and dying May 12, 1913, almost twenty-seven years to the day after Emily, Susan and Emily have been called 'nearly twins' by some (Mudge 93), and indeed they enjoyed many mutual passions for literature, especially poetry, and for gardening, recipes, music, nature. Though her intense and constant relationship with Emily Dickinson spanned five decades, forty years (from the late 1840s until the poet's death in 1886), and though Dickinson sent her substantially more writings than any other correspondent and changed at least one poem at her behest, a book-length biography of Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (called 'Susie' as a girl 'Sue' as a young and middle-aged woman 'Susan' in her later years) is yet to be written. 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.SUSAN HUNTINGTON GILBERT DICKINSON, 1830-1913Ī brief account of her life. Gone is Emily as lonely spinster here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive. 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.

Open Me Carefully invites a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship and misinterpretation.

Emily Dickinson's uncensored and breathtaking letters, poems, and letter-poems to her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinsonįor the first time, selections from Emily Dickinson's thirty-six year correspondence with her childhood friend, neighbor, and sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, are compiled in a single volume.

Gone is Emily as lonely spinster-here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive. 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.

Emily dickinson's intimate letters to susan huntington dickinson