cover image The Dickinsons of Amherst

The Dickinsons of Amherst

. University Press of New England, $29.95 (209pp) ISBN 978-1-58465-068-3

Emily Dickinson's famous reclusivemess essentially meant that family property marked the boundaries of her world. The Dickinsons of Amherst takes as one of its subjects the relationship between the poet's domestic space the Homestead, where she lived, and the Evergreens, which was built for her brother and her interior creative life. Documentary photographer and Amherst resident Jerome Liebling's hauntingly beautiful photographs (138 in color) of gates, bedrooms, family portraits and Dickinson's ghostly white dress are complemented by essays by three prominent Dickinson scholars, including one by Christopher Benfey (Emily Dickinson: Lives of a Poet) that allies the art of the photographer to the art of the poet. (Nov. 8)