Volume 34, Number 7 · April 23, 1987
Amorous in Amherst
By Robert Craft
Polly Longsworth's Austin and Mabel,[1] which includes more than 250 of the one thousand or so extant love letters between Emily Dickinson's brother and Mrs. David Todd, is one of the most explosive books ever published about social and sexual mores in nineteenth-century America. Not surprisingly, its scandalous revelations have been ignored by protective Emily-ites. Richard B. Sewall, the poet's principal biographer, is an exception: 'Since it happened close to Emily Dickinson, it is important.'
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