Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd

Synopsis

It began with the arrival in Amherst of the new astronomy professor, David Todd, and his beautiful wife, Mabel. After years of troubled marriage Austin Dickinson, head of Amherst's first family--which included his invalid mother, his sisters Emily and Vinnie, his wife Susan, and his three children--fell in love with Mabel Todd. They secretly admitted their love to each other the night after Mabel sang and played the piano at the Homestead, while Emily listened in the hallway. The consequences were fateful. From the bitterness and fury of Austin's wife and children arose "the war between the houses," the literary quarrel that started after Emily's hundreds of poems were found in the Homestead after her death. Mabel was drawn by Austin and Vinnie into editing and publishing Emily's first book, which might never have reached print otherwise. Mabel's role in its eventual success was resented by Austin's wife and his daughter Martha. Mabel also collected and published the poet's extraordinary letters, which might have disappeared. She preserved Austin's letters, and hoped to publish them too ("No love story approaches it"), but after the scandalous lawsuit that followed Austin's death in 1895, she locked up Emily's and Austin's manuscripts. Years later her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, asked Richard B. Sewall to set the record straight in his definitive, two-volume Life of Emily Dickinson. After the large collection of Todd- Bingham family papers was left to Yale University, Professor Sewall in his biography extracted from them the essence of the drama and its effect on Emily and those close to her, but he left for a later telling a detailed account of the affair. In Austin and Mabel Polly Longsworth presents for the first time the whole record of this compelling and often bizarre story of passion and human tragedy.

Copyright:

1984

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

452 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780374107161

Publisher:

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Date of Addition:

10/09/13

Copyrighted By:

Polly Longsworth, Richard B. Sewall

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction

Submitted By:

BookLady

Proofread By:

Sharon Monthei

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.