My Wars Are Laid Away in Books The Life of Emily Dickinson

Includes bibliographical references (p. [660]-739) and indexes.

"While this 764-page tome lacks the elegant prose and psychological insight of Richard B. Sewall's 1974 National Book Award-winning biography of Dickinson, Habegger provides a useful resource to the poet's admirers and students, incorporating feminist scholarship that has emerged over the past three decades into his narrative of her life. With access to a more definitively dated oeuvre as well, Habegger attempts to draw connections between Dickinson's writings and the events in her life more decisively than have other scholars. It's a risky enterprise: whether addressing a specific correspondent or no one in particular, the poet offered precise analogies for her emotional states, yet withheld so much information that it's often nearly impossible to determine the situation of a given poem. Readers can project any story they want onto her work, but, in the end, the most responsible biographical approach entails providing a context for her writings without insisting on point-to-point connections." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

"By weaving together a chronologically integrated reading of Emily Dickinson's poetry and correspondence, Habegger has written the most complete and satisfying biography to date of a poet long shrouded in myth and illusion....Yet for all he has to teach, Habegger finally warns his readers against expecting complete understanding of a poet who hid her poetry from her own family and who defied future generations with riddles and paradoxes. A superb study, too luminous to remain the exclusive property of specialists." Booklist, Starred Review

Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson s growth a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.
Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson s own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson s story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father s political isolation after the Whig Party s collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice.
The definitive treatment of Dickinson s life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.

From the Hardcover edition."

Alfred Habegger, formerly a professor of English at the University of Kansas, lives with his wife, Nellie, in northeastern Oregon. His previous books include Gender, Fantasy, and Realism in American Literature and a prize-winning biography, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr.

1. A biography of a poet ought to give readers a deeper understanding of that persons poetry. Do any of Dickinsons poems seem clearer to you now that you have read My Wars Are Laid Away in Books? Which ones? Did you get a clearer sense of her impetus as a writer — of the motives, the purposes, that drove her?

2. Habegger pays close attention to the books Dickinson is known to have read. Which books or authors seem to have made a big difference to her? Were there any that helped her define her own vocation as poet

3. Does it surprise you that over a thousand letters by Dickinson have survived, including several long ones from her girlhood? What does this extensive correspondence suggest about her? Was there anything in her letters that struck you as especially revealing? Do you see any connections between her writing of letters and her writing of poems?

4. Does it make sense to you that Dickinson was (apparently) opposed to the publication of her poems yet sent many of them to friends? How would you explain the contradiction?

5. One of the difficulties a biographer faces in understanding Dickinsons relationships is that almost none of her friends letters to her are extant. What effect does this gap in the evidence have on our understanding of her life? What patterns do you see in her relationships? As a rule, who seems to be the more needy, she or her correspondents and friends? How would you characterize her thirty-year friendship with Susan Gilbert Dickinson?

6. Habegger gives considerable attention to the poets relationship with “Master,” identifying this figure as the Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Do you find this identification convincing? If so, what do you think Dickinsons love of this man tells us about her? Why did Wadsworth appeal to her? In what ways was he a surprising and even inappropriate choice? Was there something in her that gravitated toward an impossible and inaccessible lover?

7. Edward Dickinson, the poets father, has been viewed by some as a tyrannical presence in her life. Habegger doesnt see him in this way, yet emphasizes his reactionary views on women and his authority as an old-fashioned paterfamilias. In what ways was the poet apparently satisfied to depend on Edwards authority? In what ways did she challenge or escape it? Can it be said that in some ways she modeled herself on him? Finally, how would you characterize the father-daughter relationship?

8. Although Dickinson was clearly not a hermit, she spent a great deal of time alone. What do you see as her most unusual qualities and tendencies? At what moments in her life did she strike you as seriously isolated from others? At what points did she seem recognizably — maybe even ordinarily — social?

9. To judge from the reviews of My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, some readers feel impatient that Emily Dickinsons birth doesnt come until the end of Chapter 4. Why do you think Habegger gives so much attention to her mothers and fathers families, and to early nineteenth-century developments such as the resurgence of Calvinist evangelicalism and the founding of Amherst College? Did these preliminary and contextual matters help you understand Dickinsons development?

10. Certain Christian ideas — the crucifixion, the immortal soul, heaven — often show up in Dickinsons poetry. Yet from girlhood on, she resisted the “conversion” experienced by most of her early friends and by everyone in her immediate family. So what would you say: Was she a religious poet or not?

11. What unanswered questions do you have about Dickinson after reading Habeggers biography? What one question would you ask him if you had the chance?

12. What one moment in the poets life do you wish you could have witnessed, or asked her about? Do you think she would have been willing to satisfy your curiosity?