emily dickinson intimate letters to susan

Emily appears to have valued Susan's opinions about writing and reading. In various letters, Emily compared her love for Susan to Dante's love for Beatrice, Swift's for Stella, and Mirabeau's for Sophie de Ruffey, and compared her tutelage with Susan to one with Shakespeare. She was affectionately called 'Dollie' by Emily, and characterized as an 'Avalanche of Sun', a 'breath from Gibraltar' uttering 'impregnable syllables', 'Domingo' in spirit, and 'Imagination' itself whose words are of 'Silver genealogy.' Susan and Emily Dickinson Epistolary relationship Įmily Dickinson often described her love for Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

mentor of some standing' who supposedly refused to edit Emily's poems for publication. She was known as a 'sensitive editor' who was Emily Dickinson's 'most responsive reader', a 'remarkably perceptive. Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson was viewed as the 'most graceful woman in Western Massachusetts', 'astute and cosmopolitan', as well as 'The Power' increasingly given to 'frivolity, snobbery, and ruthlessness'.

Martha (Mattie or Mopsy) Dickinson (1866–1943).

Susan and Austin Dickinson had three children:

A generous dowry from Susan's brothers helped furnish the Evergreens, a fashionable home with oak sideboards and a green marble fireplace adorned with Antonio Canova's sculpture Cupid and Psyche, Gothic chairs, and Victorian paintings. Their marriage in the Van Vranken home on July 1, 1856, was 'a quiet wedding' with 'very few friends and brothers & sisters, a little cake–a little ice cream.' Although the young couple contemplated moving to Michigan, Austin's father Edward Dickinson ensured they would stay in Amherst by making Austin a law partner and building the couple a made-to-order house, the Evergreens, on a lot next door to the Dickinson Homestead. In 1853, she was engaged to Austin Dickinson. In Amherst, she attended Utica Female Academy and Amherst Academy for one semester in the fall of 1847. She then lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her sister Harriet and brother-in-law William Cutler. Gilbert lived with her aunt, Sophia (Arms) Van Vranken, in Geneva, New York, until the late 1840s. She was orphaned by the time she was eleven years old, after her mother died in 1837 and her father in 1841. Susan Huntington Gilbert was born December 19, 1830, in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, the youngest of six children born to Thomas and Harriet (Arms) Gilbert. The Evergreens, home of Susan and Austin Dickinson, contributed by the Emily Dickinson Museum of Amherst

Emily dickinson intimate letters to susan