 | Emily Dickinson in Love: The Case for Otis Lord Subjects: Dickinson Emily 1830–1886 -- Relations with men; Lord Otis P. (Otis Phillips) 1812–1884 -- Relations with women; Dickinson Emily 1830–1886 -- Family; Poets American -- 19th century -- Biography; Emily Dickinson is popularly portrayed as a recluse who shunned romance and love. As Dickinson biographer Walsh (The Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson) points out in this compelling tale of love and mystery, Dickinson's only documented affair of the heart-with the elderly Otis Lord-didn't happen until she was in her 50s, about eight years before her death. Their involvement, which began in 1877, after Lord's wife's death, continued for seven years until Lord's death in 1884. The two shared a fully committed love, though they met infrequently, otherwise expressing their feelings in letters. But scholars have been faced with a mystery regarding Dickinson's earlier love life: letters published 50 years ago reveal a romantic attachment in her 30s with an unidentified man she called "Master." With painstaking detective work, Walsh examines each of these letters, comparing them with Dickinson's confessional poetry and other letters, and claims that "Master" was Lord, who ruled Dickinson's heart much earlier than previously known. It was at the end of the affair that Dickinson became the familiar recluse dressed in white. In appendixes, Walsh presents the text and reproductions of the "Master letters." While Walsh offers abundant evidence for his claims, this revelation about Dickinson's life is likely to interest only the poet's most ardent followers. 32 illus. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. John Evangelist Walsh was born in Manhattan, New York on December 27, 1927. He enlisted in the Army and served in the infantry in Italy in the mid-1940s and as a reporter and photographer for military newspapers. When he returned home, he enrolled in Iona College, but before graduating he was hired as a reporter for The Oneonta Daily Star in upstate New York. It was the start of a career that took him to Prentice-Hall, Simon and Schuster, and Reader's Digest, where he headed condensed-book projects. He wrote several books during his lifetime including Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost, This Brief Tragedy: The Unraveling of the Todd-Dickinson Affair, and Unraveling Piltdown: The Science Fraud of the Century and Its Solution. He was also the project editor on the condensation of the Reader's Digest Bible from 850,000 words to 510,000 words. He died on March 19, 2015 at the age of 87. (Bowker Author Biography) |
