Dickinson in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates ed. by Jane Donahue Eberwein, Stephanie Farrar, and Cristanne Miller (review)

Dickinson in Her Own Time, a recent addition to the "Writers in Their Own Time" series under the general editorship of Joel Myerson, is a wonderfully lively introduction to the poet and an engaging reference work. The book opens with an impressive introduction that makes clear its aims and its primary contributions to Dickinson studies. This is followed by a chronology, and the main body of the work: letters, reminiscences, and reviews divided into three sections. This new edition of contemporary responses to the poet, foundational for later scholarly publications such as Willis J. Buckingham's Emily Dickinson's Reception in the 1880s and the two standard biographies, Richard B. Sewall's The Life of Emily Dickinson and Alfred Habegger's My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson, contributes to current scholarly efforts, such as Eliza Richards' Emily Dickinson in Context, that seek to situate Dickinson in her own historical moment. Though most but not all of the documents included here have previously appeared in other venues, the editorial selection that limits the volume and sharpens the focus invites and rewards intensified scrutiny.

The editors of Dickinson in Her Own Time state early in their introduction that one of their primary aims is to "provide evidence" of a Dickinson who is neither "a weird recluse" nor "morbid," to use the words of Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Amy Lowell, but rather a poet who is "humorous, playful," and deeply "interested in other people." This is a tall order, given the persistence of the image of Dickinson as a morose shut-away, but the collective impact of letters describing the poet at all phases of her life, in combination with the wide range of poems discussed in published reviews, is convincing. The editors' other central objective, to show that "Dickinson was in fact identified as a writer in her lifetime," is definitively established through an abundance of documents that also demonstrate how the poet "made considerable provision for the survival of her poems and laid the groundwork for their eventual publication." A consistent strength of this collection is the skill with which editors have arranged primary documents so that aspects of the poet's life and work that might go unnoticed in standard editions of the letters and accounts of her reception stand out with particular force.

The first of the three divisions of the book, "A Life Enshrouded in 'fiery mist,'" performs as an introduction to the poet as seen through the eyes of contemporaries, including the friends and family who knew her best. This part of the book is especially helpful in challenging the simplistic "myth" of Dickinson's reclusion and supposed morbidity that all too often impedes appreciation of her humor and complexity. The second section, "The Life of the Poems," clearly communicates the initial anxiety and ultimate delight experienced by those most directly engaged in the first publications of Dickinson's poems and letters during the 1890s. This portion of the book usefully juxtaposes the well-known contrasting reviews by W. D. Howells and Andrew Lang, in addition to explaining how Dickinson's first editors, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, sought to prevent reader fascination with Dickinson's private life from overshadowing the brilliance of her writing. Part three of the volume, "Twentieth-Century Recognition and Remembrance," concentrates on how Dickinson's poetry survived the turbulence of its earliest reception, while also acknowledging a persistent public interest in the oddities of Dickinson's private life. In her 1914 preface to The Single Hound, for instance, Bianchi recalls being told that Dickinson "is taught in colleges as a rare being; a weird recluse." Even Lowell, who in 1918 heralded Dickinson...