Jane Ciabattari on Emily Dickinson’s Friendship With Abolitionist
A review by Jane Ciabattari
How many know that Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the radical abolitionist who was one of the "Secret Six" who supported John Brown's bold raid on Harpers Ferry, later became the literary confidant of the reclusive apolitical poet Emily Dickinson? Higginson is the question mark in this equation. Dickinson has been the target of more than a century of obsessive scholarly excavation. In White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Brenda Wineapple, biographer of Hawthorne, Janet Flanner, and Gertrude and Leo Stein, explores the curious 24-year relationship between the Amherst, Mass., poet and Higginson, her designated tutor and critic. Wineapple makes a case for a parallel sensibility, iconoclasm, fanaticism and courage. She captures the intellectual and political climate of New England in the last half of the 19th century and sheds light on Higginson's radicalism. "Braced by the righteousness of his cause -- the unequivocal emancipation of slaves...
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