Lives Like Loaded Guns - 9780670021932

"With the artistry of a master storyteller Lyndall Gordon parts the curtains on the Garbo of Amherst to lay bare an explosive drama of genius, adultery, deceit and secret sickness as theatrical as Peyton Place. Sizzling from start to finish, Lives Like Loaded Guns is simply biography at its most thrilling."-Marion Meade, author of Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney

"Lives Like Loaded Guns is nothing short of splendid. Seasoned Dickinson scholars and novice readers alike will find Gordon's nuanced storytelling deeply informative, engaging, supple, and compelling as she handles some of the most complex aspects of Dickinson family lives deftly, refusing to fall into the too-easy clichTs that often imbue accounts of these internecine struggles."-Martha Nell Smith, professor of English, University of Maryland; author of Emily Dickinson: A User's Guide

"Tell the truth but tell it slant' was Dickinson's advice to herself. In showing how the public image of 'Emily Dickinson' has been built up over the years, alterately embroidered by fantasies and barnacled with lies. Gordon does something much more important. Perhaps for the first time since Dickinson's death, she invites us to meet the poet head-on."-Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Telegraph (UK)

"This biography is not about taking sides, nor does it claim 'truth' in any absolute way. Its quetioning intelligence is a real pleasure and, as always with Gordon, the writing flows. It is a biography that compels without being sensational, quite a feat considering the material, with its twist, curves, lies, deliberate distortions and well-intentioned concealments."-Jeaneet Winterson. The Times (UK)

"For the first time, Lyndall Gordon reveals the whole story behind the enigma of Emily Dickinson and her family's feuds for control of her unpublished manuscripts. Lives Like Loaded Guns is a seasoned literary biographer's brilliant assessment of the archival record, from overlooked medical records and adultery trial manuscripts to Dickinson's predawn volcanic eruptions of powerful verse...The feisty forcefield of Emily Dickinson's true genius greets the reader face-to-face in Gordon's masterpiece. This riveting tour de force doesn't merely add to existing Emily Dickinson scholarship, it blows it apart."-Karen V. Kukil, curator of the Sylvia Plat and Virginia Woolf collections of Smith College; editor of the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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 more than a century. Award-winning biographer Lyndall Gordon tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse who exists in the popular imagination. Thanks to her unprecedented use of letters, diaries and legal documents, Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson and proposes a groundbreaking new solution to the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, presenting 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 promises to forever change the way we view one of America's most important literary figures.