THIS WAS A POET: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson

A scholarly but very readable and often challenging portrait of Emily Dickinson:- first her life, then her work. He shows her as witty, gay and social in her youth, to the manner born, yet with stoic side from her Puritan forebears, her childlike honesty and joy of life, her background, family history, childhood and schooling. And then the two major influences of her life -- the tutor who inspired her to become a poet, and Wedsworth, the Philadelphia clergyman, the moving force behind her love poems, a fact corroborated by letters and dates. The balance of the book is an analysis of her work, sources of style, formative influences, the role of nature, the interplay of concrete and intangible.