Megan Marshall Reviews Book about Emily Dickinson’s Life for NYT
Charles Wesley Emerson Professor Megan Marshall reviewed “These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson,” a new work by Martha Ackmann that examines further the life of poet Emily Dickinson. The review is mixed, but Marshall appreciates the detail Ackmann brings to her analysis.
I quickly came to treasure Ackmann’s ample descriptions, her deep knowledge of the poet’s milieu, gained over the course of nearly two decades while teaching a weekly seminar to Mount Holyoke College students held at the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Mass. In recent years we’ve been blessed — or tormented, depending on your view — with two Emily Dickinson biopics of dubious historical fidelity, and the flagrantly fictionalized TV series “Dickinson.” “These Fevered Days” is the perfect antidote: thoroughly researched, and yet, with Ackmann’s energetic storytelling, alive.
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