News at Eleven: Indeed, [Emily] Dickinson's status

as the great 19th-century American woman poet may actually stand in the way of a dispassionate American literary response. Oxford professor Lyndall Gordon brings the advantage of distance and a fresh and tough-minded perspective to her fascinating study. Combining information from biographies and library archives, and paying careful attention to material that has been overlooked or overshadowed, Gordon also considers the afterlife of Dickinson's poetry. She offers clear and boldly original answers to the "unanswered questions" of Dickinson's life, and an ethnographic and historical approach to the problems of the literary biographer. Although such answers can never explain the nature or sources of creativity, Gordon argues that they can offer "securer openings" to Dickinson's buried life.

from The Guardian: Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds by Lyndall Gordon

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