Emily Dickinson Face to Face

Emily Dickinson springs to life in this remarkable, long-out-of-print biography written by her niece. The daughter of Dickinson’s older brother, Bianchi enchants immediately with anecdotes about being babysat by the poet on Sunday mornings when the rest of the household was in church. To the children, “Aunt Emily stood for indulgence,” secretly handing out sweets forbidden by stricter adults or eagerly “subscribing” when the children declared they were issuing their own newspaper. Bianchi shows that even as Dickinson withdrew physically from the wider world, she followed the shifting mores of the time, eagerly awaiting her adolescent niece’s reports about parties, clothes, and boys. While Bianchi reverentially describes her aunt’s observational genius (“a mystic inclusion in some higher beauty known only to herself”), she also wants readers to know Dickinson could be a bit of an art monster, whose friends weren’t afraid to call her on it. After one drove from out of town to visit her only to hear she was refusing “to come down from some whim,” he ignored the pretenses, calling up the stairs, “Emily, you rascal!—come down here!” She eventually did. Though millions of pages have been written about Dickinson, as poet Anthony Madrid notes in the book’s foreword, few have provided such a thrilling close-up portrait. Readers will be rapt from the first page. (Apr.)