Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds

New York: Viking; Penguin, 2010. xvii, 491 pages, [16] pages of plates, illustrations, portraits; 24 cm. Firm binding, gently creased spine. Clean inside copy. Age toning. Stated First American edition. Fine DJ. "A startling portrayal of one of America's most significant literary figures that will change the way we view her life and legacy. In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to unprecedented use of letters, diaries, and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms. An enthralling story of creative genius, filled with illicit passion and betrayal, Lives Like Loaded Guns is sure to cause a stir among Dickinson's many devoted readers and scholars. / Lyndall Gordon is the author of Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, a New York Times Notable Book; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life, winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography; as well as biographies of T. S. Eliot and Charlotte Bronte. She is a senior research fellow at St. Hilda's College in Oxford, England." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Fine. 8vo.