Lives Like Loaded Guns

Noted literary biographer Gordon (senior research fellow, St. Hilda's Coll., Oxford; Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life) combed the archival record, including newly available materials, and presents a twofold thesis about her subject: first, that Dickinson's seclusion was due to an epileptic condition; second, that the question of who should manage and present to the world Dickinson's oeuvre and the details of her life has been influenced by a family feud that began in Dickinson's lifetime and continues to color scholarship to this day. The key person in this feud was Mabel Todd, who became the mistress of Emily's married brother Austin, altering the relationships among the remaining principals: Austin, Emily, their sister Lavinia, and Austin's wife, Sue. The first portion of the book, drawing extensively on Dickinson's own words put into context as explanation of her physical and mental state, is speculative and not entirely convincing as proof of epilepsy. The second part, however, on the nature and impact of the feud, is well developed and engrossing.