My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson

About this book

Emily Dickinson probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinsons growtha richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production. Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives congregational records contemporary womens writing and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinsons own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinsons story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her fathers political isolation after the Whig Partys collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice. The definitive treatment of Dickinsons life and times and of her poetic development My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny her living changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.