Emily Dickinson Face to Face

by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Anthony Madrid (Foreword by)

Overview

Long out of print, a uniquely intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson written by her niece.

What would it be like to have Emily Dickinson as your babysitter? In this astonishing memoir, out of print for almost a century, Martha “Matty” Dickinson describes the childhood she spent next door to—and often in the care of—her Aunt Emily. We see Matty as a little girl, hiding from the other grownups in Emily’s upstairs rooms, helping Emily in the kitchen, venturing with her into the cellar for the gingerbread she wasn’t supposed to have. As Matty becomes a teenager, she finds a confidante in her aunt, who is fascinated by the latest youth fads, school gossip, and the recurring question of what to wear to a party (“her ‘vote’ was for my highest-heeled red slippers”)—not to mention the music, novels, and poems she and Matty both love. From an early age, Emily teaches Matty the joys of solitude and independence: “No one,” Emily said, “could ever punish a Dickinson by shutting her up alone.” First published in 1932, this is the most intimate record we have of Emily Dickinson, whose death sparked a long family struggle over her work and her image. In a foreword to this new edition, the poet and critic Anthony Madrid provides a biographical frame for Matty’s recollections, and explains how such a remarkable document could spend so long out of sight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946022592
Publisher:	McNally Editions
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Series:	McNally Editions
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	955,050
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1866–1943) was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, next door to her father’s sister, Emily Dickinson. She was educated at several girls’ schools and at home by tutors from Amherst College, and she studied piano at the Smith College School of Music. As well as editing important editions of Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters, Bianchi published novels and poems of her own and was a frequent contributor to Harper’s and the Atlantic. In 1902 she married the Russian count Alexander Bianchi; they divorced in 1920. In her later years she divided her time between New York and her childhood home, now part of the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Anthony Madrid's criticism has appeared in the Paris Review Daily and Harriet. His two poetry collections are I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say and Try Never.

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/24/2023

Emily Dickinson springs to life in this remarkable, long-out-of-print biography written by her niece. The daughter of Dickinson’s older brother, Bianchi enchants immediately with anecdotes about being babysat by the poet on Sunday mornings when the rest of the household was in church. To the children, “Aunt Emily stood for indulgence,” secretly handing out sweets forbidden by stricter adults or eagerly “subscribing” when the children declared they were issuing their own newspaper. Bianchi shows that even as Dickinson withdrew physically from the wider world, she followed the shifting mores of the time, eagerly awaiting her adolescent niece’s reports about parties, clothes, and boys. While Bianchi reverentially describes her aunt’s observational genius (“a mystic inclusion in some higher beauty known only to herself”), she also wants readers to know Dickinson could be a bit of an art monster, whose friends weren’t afraid to call her on it. After one drove from out of town to visit her only to hear she was refusing “to come down from some whim,” he ignored the pretenses, calling up the stairs, “Emily, you rascal!—come down here!” She eventually did. Though millions of pages have been written about Dickinson, as poet Anthony Madrid notes in the book’s foreword, few have provided such a thrilling close-up portrait. Readers will be rapt from the first page. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"What makes this little memoir extraordinary, even unique, in all the millions of pages written about Dickinson is its intimacy . . . Say the memoirist, later known as Martha Dickinson Bianchi (we’ll call her Mattie), was four and Emily Dickinson (ED) was forty, that means Mattie knew ED, more or less continuously, through the last fifteen years of ED’s life. 'Knew'? She probably cuddled with her. Gotta be only six or seven people in the history of the universe who cuddled with Emily Dickinson, and only one who gives us a child’s-eye view of ED with other grownups."

from the Foreword - Anthony Madrid

Written by Emily Dickinson’s niece, this memoir—out of print for nearly a century—offers a more intimate side of the poet, from anecdotes detailing her secretly handing out sweets to her interest in the latest gossip, fashions and books.

New York Times Book Review

Here, the famously reclusive poet is depicted in her most intimate light—a treasured relative of an awestruck niece. Though written when Bianchi (1866-1943) was in her 60s, the author’s recollections remain fresh with whimsy . . . Emily Dickinson appears here as an almost mythical, magical figure in her niece’s life."

Wall Street Journal - Angelina Torre

For Bianchi, Dickinson was not merely a magical and beloved aunt but also a metric for her own evolution. She assessed her maturation by the nuance with which she perceives the poet . . . Her affectionate proximity to Dickinson—a proximity Todd did not share—must influence one’s reading of Emily Dickinson Face to Face. If Bianchi, too, mythologized her aunt, it is nonetheless a mythology spun from lived interactions with the woman at their center.

Poetry - Rachel Vorona Cote

05/01/2023

Published in 1932 by Emily Dickinson's beloved niece Mattie, this slim volume combines two long-out-of-print recollections that draw readers close to a poet whose reclusive lifestyle made her "something of a fable" in her own lifetime. Privileged by her youth, Mattie was often accomplice to her Aunt Emily—"a friend more rare than any other we knew"—in her "elfin, mischievous strain," confiding in a stage whisper droll epigrams about visitors surveyed from the landing above. Amidst the vividly evoked "Finite Infinity" of her circumscribed world, readers encounter Emily, her white dress faintly glowing in the dim hallway dubbed "the Northwest passage," her low-pitched voice "almost husky at times of intensity, sweetly confidential." She gestures, turning an invisible key to lock the world away. Readers open a care package of flowers and cookies and beneath, a short scrawled note, elliptical and enigmatic as a Zen koan. A playful foreword by poet Anthony Madrid recounts the family squabbles over the poet's literary legacy that helped inspire Bianchi's memoir. VERDICT With charming anecdotes and moments vividly recalled, Bianchi's thoughtful account offers the rarest of first-hand glimpses behind Dickinson's swiftly drawn curtain, conveyed in searching and graceful prose worthy of its subject.

Library Journal