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

Author: Lyndall Gordon Year: 2009 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Biographies, Non Fiction, Poetry, History, Memoirs Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780670021932 9780143119142 0670021938 0143119141

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. Similar books: Byron by Benita Eisler Anne Sexton by Diane Middlebrook Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford Robert Lowell by Ian Hamilton Philip Larkin by James Booth Arthur Rimbaud by Enid Starkie Philip Larkin by Andrew Motion Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson Keats by Andrew Motion Walt Whitman by Justin Kaplan Sylvia Plath by Linda Wagner-Martin Byron by Fiona MacCarthy Cheever by Blake Bailey Nancy Reagan by Kitty Kelley Howard Hughes by Donald L. Barlett Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade Rough Magic by Paul Alexander City Poet by Brad Gooch Vindication by Lyndall Gordon