A Literary Life

8/12/2019 A Literary Life

1/5

Emily Dickinson: A Literary Life by Linda Wagner-Martin (review)

Alfred Habegger

The Emily Dickinson Journal, Volume 23, Number 1, 2014, pp. 120-123

(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/edj.2014.0002

For additional information about this article

Access provided by username 'Azure' (27 Jul 2014 03:54 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/edj/summary/v023/23.1.habegger.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/edj/summary/v023/23.1.habegger.htmlhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/edj/summary/v023/23.1.habegger.html


2/5

The Emily Dickinson Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 1

120

Book Reviews

ALFRED HABEGGER

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Emily Dickinson: A Literary Life. Basingstoke, England:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. $85.

Not forgeing Roger Lundins able aempt of 1998, Emily Dickinson and

the Art of Belief, there is a need for a short biography that provides a trustworthy

account of Dickinsons writing life: its stages and milestones; how family, friends,

and correspondents played into the development and expression of her art; and

what can be gathered from recent claims, insights, discoveriesa book, in short,

that one can condently recommend to readers at all levels. Linda Wagner-

Martins brief biography is part of a series, Literary Lives, which, avoiding the

spirit of traditional biography, as the general editor puts it, aims to trace the

professional, publishing and social contexts that shape an oeuvre (i). The author,

as the back cover tells us, has won numerous awards and produced fty-three

books. Is Emily Dickinson: A Literary Life the compact treatment we have been

waiting for?

Fiingly enough, the book follows others in emphasizing the importance

of Aunt Lavinia Norcross and her daughters in the poets life; the inuence of

the Dickinsons domestic help, Margaret OBrien and Margaret Maher, on herproductivity; the impress of the Civil War; and the roles played by Thomas

Wentworth Higginson and Otis Phillips Lord. In handling conundrums like the

Master leers and the terrorsince September, the author shows a commendable

respect for indeterminacy. I rather like the treatment of grimness in the poems of

1866 and 1867, and I admire the diligence with which the scholarly record has been

sifted (though Domhnall MitchellsMeasures of Possibilityis overlooked). But none

of these praiseworthy achievements can disguise the fact that this is a distinctly

unsatisfactory biography, one that goes o the rails so consistently that informedreaders will nd their patience severely tried.

2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press


3/5

Book Reviews

121

On page one we read that if [the Edward Dickinson family] went abroad,

which was unlikely, they traveled to England, France, and perhaps Italy (my

italics). On page six, in connection with Dickinsons early interest in science, we

meet the conjecture that as a girl or young woman she saw some opportunities

for employment in the eld. On page nine, it appears that her early teasing poem,

Oh the Earth was madefor lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain (Fr1), was not

sent to Elbridge G. Bowdoin, as the record shows, but to Benjamin Newtonan

impossible supposition. The author interprets I have a Bird in spring (Fr4) as a

troubled response to news of the engagement of Susan Gilbert, only to assert a few

paragraphs later that by the time Emily wrote the poem she was reconciled to

Sues plans. Indeed, the poem is a kind of negligent dismissal (16)this about

a lyric that puts the speakers tenacious aachment front and center. Of all the

Sounds despatched abroad (Fr334) is said to be a poem in memoriam for lost

friends (58). We learn that certain poems appeared in what Dickinson labeled

Fascicle I (34), only to be advised at a later point that, as R. W. Franklin makes

clear, Dickinson never used the term fascicle herself (78). Further on, however,

we nd that a poem was placed in what by this time Dickinson is calling Set 6c

(105).

As these quotations suggest, the book appears to be in a half-conscious fugue-

like state. Each new topic and statement is so detached from previous points thatthe texture becomes chaotic and even incoherent. The author does not so much

rehearse what is known about Dickinsons life and work as run a line of hearsay,

fantasy, and improbable guesswork around and above the facts. I never hear

the word Escape / Without a quicker blood (Fr144) inspires the reection that

the poet might have welcomed the chance to leave her sorrowing home (55)a

conjecture as otiose and literal as it is remote from the poets known preferences.

For aspiring Dickinson biographers, the existing commentary represents a

huge challenge and a precious gift. They must try to distinguish what is usefuland cogent from what is journeymans work, or special pleading, or fanciful

and unsound, and then they must incorporate the best of it into an overarching

vision and coherent narrative. Wagner-Martins way of meeting this challenge is

to quote one critic after another and basically leave it at that. At times her primary

task appears to be a neutral review of scholarship. After giving us James Olneys

observation that the poets traditional meters allowed for a very large

element of play, she reproduces George Frisbie Whichers claim that Dickinson

accepted [the hymn form] as unquestioningly as she accepted the alphabet

(98-99), and then moves on, leaving the implicit disagreement unresolved. When


4/5

The Emily Dickinson Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 1

122

she does comment, she often distorts. Citing My Wars Are Laid Away in Books,

she transforms the statement that in early 1862 Sue tried to acquire [Thomas

Wentworth Higginsons] photograph into the claim that early in 1862, Susan

herself writes to Higginson . . . (Habegger 451-2) (55). Naturally, I am pleased to

see my work made use of, but I am dismayed to see a factoid created and laid at

my door.

It is equally dismaying to see how many previously existing factoids have

been trustingly gathered for exhibition. Apropos the obsessive housecleaning of

Dickinsons mother, the author tells us that Polly Longsworth speculates that

she inherited her fearful, anxious temperament from her own mother, Betsey

Fay Norcross (4)a dubious guess in view of the leers from Monson relaying

Betseys wish that young Mrs. Dickinson would stop driving herself so hard.

From the same aractive coee-table book, the author reproduces Christopher

Benfeys careless and easily disproved claim that the poet sent pictures of Barre

Browning to several of her friends (11).

The most glaring instance of the uncritical recycling of unfounded speculation

is the adoption of Lyndall Gordons thesis that Dickinson was epileptic and that

this aiction may be the key to her mysterious life-choices. Because of the pressure

this sensational claim from a respected biographer places on our understanding of

the poet, biographers are now obliged to master the medical and pharmaceuticalliterature as well as pertinent family leers. Gordon did not do this, neither has

Wagner-Martin, and neither, one suspects, will careless scholars in time to come.

Yet this is one of the few Dickinson controversies that can be permanently retired.

A 2013 article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicineby Norbert Hirschhorn and

Polly Longsworth seles the question. The theory that Dickinson suered from

epilepsy no longer has standing.

A striking feature of Emily Dickinson: A Literary Lifeis its great distance from

primary sources and manuscript traces (this in spite of the respectful treatmentof critics focused on manuscripts). I have never read a biographer who shows so

lile interest in geing as close to the subject as possible. In quoting Dickinsons

leers, Wagner-Martin frequently cites the secondary sources where she found her

quotations instead of going to Thomas H. Johnsons edition. Particularly bizarre is

the way she repeatedly gives Aife Murrays stimulatingMaid as Musethe credit for

R. W. Franklins tally of poems by year (50, 103, 155). Evidently, she never found

her way to the variorum editions second appendix, Distribution by Year.

Do Wagner-Martins insights into Dickinsons poems compensate for

the biographical missteps? Here is a garden of verses, reader, with banalities


5/5

Book Reviews

123

appended. Ill tell you how the Sun rose - (Fr204) is an example of the young

poet persona observing the natural life that surrounds her (57). A throe opon

the features is a clear reference to physical debility (34). She laid her docile

Crescent down (Fr1453) invokes sorrow for the person who has died (156).

No less disconcerting is the tendency of Wagner-Martins Dickinson to be forever

using, as when she uses separation of words . . . to slow the poem (68), or

use[s] the sentence So I loop my apron (69) for another purpose. According to

the author, in the later 1860s Dickinson did keep her literary and quasi-literary

actions active (125). Has our language-loving poet ever been weighed down by

more leaden prose?

This sad simulacrum of a biography by a recipient of the Hubbell Medal

prompts some hard questions about the abuses of academic publishing in the

humanities. But this is not the place to go into that, and I will content myself with

two questions that are more immediate. Is not this the time for libraries struggling

with reduced budgets to review their standing orders with Palgrave Macmillan,

particularly the lucrative Literary Lives series, which runs to sixty volumes with

this latest contribution? And would it not be a high service if the author of Lives

Like Loaded Gunscould publicly revisit the epilepsy idea and free future readers

from what has become a distraction and a curse?

JAMES R. GUTHRIE

Walsh, John Evangelist. Emily Dickinson in Love: The Case for Otis Lord. New

Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. $25.

As has all too often been the case for members of the poets inner circle,

biographers have tended to veer toward making hyperbolic, totalizing, and

often self-interested arguments concerning one or another of Emily Dickinsons

friends or potential lovers. This book is no exception. Sensationalistic, unrealistic,

and heavily sentimentalized, Walshs volume contributes lile to understandingany more clearly how the poet really felt about Judge Lord. One of the more

Documents

A Literary Life