Product Description

The first book to portray one of the most remarkable friendships in American letters, that of Emily Dickinson—recluse, poet—and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, literary figure, active abolitionist.

Their friendship began in 1862. The Civil War was raging. Dickinson was thirty-one; Higginson, thirty-eight. A former pastor at the Free Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, he wrote often for the cultural magazine of the day, The Atlantic Monthly—on gymnastics, women’s rights, and slavery. His article “Letter to a Young Contributor” gave advice to readers who wanted to write for the magazine and offered tips on how to submit one’s work (“use black ink, good pens, white paper”).

Among the letters Higginson received in response was one scrawled in looping, difficult handwriting. Four poems were enclosed in a smaller envelope. He deciphered the scribble: “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”

Higginson read the poems. The writing was unique, uncategorizable. It was clear to him that this was “a wholly new and original poetic genius,” and the memory of that moment stayed with him when he wrote about it thirty years later.

Emily Dickinson’s question inaugurated one of the least likely correspondences in American letters—between a man who ran guns to Kansas, backed John Brown, and would soon command the first Union regiment of black soldiers, and the eremitic, elusive poet who cannily told him she did not cross her “Father’s ground to any House or town.”

For the next quarter century, until her death in 1886, Dickinson sent Higginson dazzling poems, almost one hundred of them—many of them her best. Their metrical forms were unusual, their punctuation unpredictable, their images elliptical, innovative, unsentimental. Poetry torn up by the roots, Higginson later said, that “gives the sudden transitions.”

Dickinson was a genius of the faux-naïf variety, reclusive to be sure but more savvy than one might imagine, more self-conscious and sly, and certainly aware of her outsize talent. “Dare you see a Soul at the ‘White Heat’?” she wondered. She dared, and he did.

In this shimmering, revelatory work, Brenda Wineapple re-creates the extraordinary, delicate friendship that led to the publication of Dickinson’s poetry. And though she and Higginson met face-to-face only twice (he had never met anyone “who drained my nerve power so much,” he said), their friendship reveals much about Dickinson, throwing light onto both the darkened door of the poet’s imagination and a corner of the noisy century that she and Colonel Higginson shared.

White Heat is about poetry, politics, and love; it is, as well, a story of seclusion and engagement, isolation and activism—and the way they were related—in the roiling America of the nineteenth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108048 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-12
• Released on: 2008-08-12
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400044016
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a noted man of letters and radical activist for abolition and women's rights, asking if he would look at her poems. He did and recognized immediately their strange power. As Wineapple points out in this brilliant study, Dickinson's letter marked the blossoming of a complicated lifelong friendship. Although the two met face-to-face only twice, Higginson found Dickinson's explosive poetry seductive. Drawing on 25 years' worth of Dickinson's letters (Higginson's are lost), Wineapple contests the traditional portrait of her as isolated from the world and liking it that way. In her poems and her letters, Wineapple shows, Dickinson was the consummate flirt, a sorceress, a prestidigitator in words. Wineapple resurrects the reputation of Higginson, long viewed as stodgy in his literary tastes (he reviled Whitman) yet who recognized Dickinson's genius and saw her work as an example of the democratic art he fervently believed in. As Wineapple did previously with Hawthorne (Hawthorne: A Life), she elegantly delves into a life and offers rich insights into a little-known relationship between two of the late–19th century's most intriguing writers. 32 photos. (Aug. 13)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics embraced this new angle on the life of Emily Dickinson, one of America’s best-loved poets but also one of the most difficult to understand. While the subject of the book may seem rather narrow, reviewers claimed that Wineapple’s excellent narrative and literary sensibilities keep White Heat from becoming overly obscure. Only the Boston Globe faulted Wineapple for reading too vaguely between the lines, literally, of Dickson and Wineapple’s correspondence and for rehashing older material. Overall, however, the result is a book that balances literary criticism, biography, and history, while never straying too far from the few available facts about Dickinson and her life.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

From Booklist
*Starred Review* With this unexpected query—“Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”—a reclusive young poet opened a quarter of a century of revealing correspondence with a prominent critic for the Atlantic Monthly. That critic—Thomas Wentworth Higginson—figures in most recent accounts of Emily Dickinson’s remarkable career as an obtuse meddler, blind to her living talent and inept in preparing her work for posthumous publication. In this revisionist assessment of the Dickinson-Higginson relationship, Wineapple delivers a far more favorable portrait of Higginson, a portrait that vindicates Dickinson’s judgment in choosing him as her longtime confidant. Higginson may have comprehended Dickinson’s revolutionary verse only falteringly, but he recognized and fostered the genius of its creator. Higginson embraced Dickinson’s fearless prosody, Wineapple argues, because he had devoted his entire life to breaking down restrictive barriers. Fighting to free slaves and emancipate women, Higginson naturally responded sympathetically to Dickinson’s daring assaults on traditional aesthetics. Because Higginson’s letters have mysteriously vanished, Wineapple must infer much from Dickinson’s missives. But as the conduit of more than 100 of Dickinson’s wonderful poems, those missives radiate the luminous warmth of a friendship that forever enriched American literature. A nuanced and insightful study. --Bryce Christensen

Customer Reviews

a stellar biography
Brenda Wineapple's expertise as a biographer is evident on every page. She knows how to handle her massive research without intruding on the main narrative. She knows how to balance conflicting views of her two protagonists, evoking sympathy and admiration for both. She is able to place them deftly in the context of their moment in American history. She reads Dickinson's poems with sensitivity and skill. White Heat deserves the great reception it has received so far, and even surpassed expectations I had after reading reviews in the NY Times and The New Yorker.

Even unpublished writers need validation
At first glance, even from the old photos, they seem like vastly different people. Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a man of various talents. He was a well-traveled writer, yes; but he was also involved in public service and the reform movement, and he was intent on seeking out a certain amount of fame and celebrity for himself. Emily Dickinson was the quintessential homebody who saw the world mostly from her bucolic Main Street window. She wrote poetry that she shared only with close friends or tucked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Higginson grew up in the realm of liberal Unitarianism and Harvard College. Dickinson's conservative grandfather was a devout Congregationalist who founded Amherst College. Their families represented the opposite edges of life in New England in the 1800s. Yet it was WORDS that brought these unlikely correspondents together.

With "White Heat," Brenda Wineapple follows the current trend of studying history through dual biography, or vice versa. Odds are good that much of the reading public will recognize only one of the two names listed in the title, for Emily's storied reputation precedes her. Even those who cannot recite her lines by heart "know" that she was a recluse who wasn't published much during her lifetime. But what parts of her myth are true, and which are not? Wineapple does her best to unravel the life of the real Emily Dickinson -- or, at least, as close to reality as we can guess.

Fans of the Transcendentalists know well of Wentworth Higginson, the former minister who was a disciple of Thoreau and one of John Brown's Secret Six. They will have heard something about him becoming Dickinson's literary agent of sorts, publishing her work posthumously. But how did he come to be so involved with her? How did he gain access to her poetry? What's the rest of the story?

Here we learn that Emily sent her first letter to Wentworth in 1862, prompted by an article he wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, and thus began a correspondence and friendship that lasted until her death in 1886. (She initially asked for writing advice and included samples of her poems; he was so awed that he knew he had none to give.) We follow their lives chronologically and discover much about their personalities through their letters and other writings. Wentworth even visited Emily on several occasions, and she greeted him at the door with bouquets of flowers. Thus is it easy for the romantics among us to imagine that the two were in love. But Wentworth was married, and Emily was coquettishly playful but kept her distance. Only in her cryptic verses did she allow a glimpse of her thoughts and emotions. And after she was gone, her best friend did his best to share her gifts with the rest of the world.

(As if having a book published today isn't challenging enough: How difficult must it have been to try to assemble a volume of someone's poems with both her sister and her brother's mistress demanding involvement in the process and the proceeds? And who edited those stanzas, anyway?)

"White Heat" should have wide appeal to fans of Dickinson, fans of the Transcendentalists, students of American lit and the writing process, and anyone who admires insightful Civil-War-era biographies. This outstanding work deserves as much success as John Matteson's Alcott bio, "Eden's Outcasts," found this past year.

An exceptional book that belongs in any personal library
Brenda Wineapple writes an intimate portrait of Higginson and Dickinson with sensitivity and elegance. I was afraid it would be rather dry, but just the opposite is true. The author is heady and scholarly, but the writing takes off like an engrossing story, lifts you with it. There is nothing stodgy or stuffy about this book. The narrative flows with grace, and her prose style engages you with its intelligent delivery. It is thoroughly researched--while reading it, I was brought back in time and place. I saw through their eyes. I was inside of Dickinson and beside Higginson. At Emily's home in Amherst, I easily felt what she felt when she looked out her window.

I look forward to more from this author.