"So has a Daisy vanished": Emily Dickinson and Tuberculosis

by George Mamunes

Overview

This work places Emily Dickinson's poetry in a new setting, examining the many ways in which Dickinson's literary style was affected by her experiences with tuberculosis and her growing fear of contracting the disease. The author gives an in-depth discussion on 73 of Dickinson's poems, providing readers with a fresh perspective on issues that have long plagued Dickinson biographers, including her notoriously shut-in lifestyle, her complicated relationship with the tuberculosis-stricken Benjamin Franklin Newton, and the possible real-life inspirations for her "terror since September."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786432271
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	10/24/2007
Pages:	211
Sales rank:	858,579
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.42(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

George Mamunes is a retired teacher of American history. He is a member of the Emily Dickinson International Society and lives in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     
Introduction     

1. The Omitted Center     
2. Dread Disease     
3. Impenitence     
4. Ben Newton     
5. First Love     
6. Spirit-Bride     
7. Queen Recluse     
8. Terror     
9. Afterlife     

Appendix A: Novel Excerpts     
Appendix B: List of Poems     
Chapter Notes     
Bibliography     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

groundbreaking...well researched and carefully documented, this book is a compelling study of a widespread and dreaded disease that haunted the lives of Dickinson and her contemporaries.”—Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin; “opens up for readers a rich lode of information and insight, not only about Dickinson’s health but also about her relationship to other writers and about the role of chronic disease in nineteenth-century American culture.”—Mary Loeffelholz, author of Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist Theory and From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Poetry; “Mamunes argues convincingly...in a book filled with haunting stories, Mamunes draws evidence from medical records, Amherst archives, popular fiction, and even Benjamin Newton’s probate records to cast fresh perspective on Dickinson’s explosive artistic achievement.”—Jane Donahue Eberwein, author of Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation and editor of An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia.

From the Publisher

opens up for readers a rich lode of information and insight, not only about Dickinson's health but also about her relationship to other writers and about the role of chronic disease in nineteenth-century American culture.

author of Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist Theory and From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American - Mary Loeffelholz

groundbreaking...well researched and carefully documented, this book is a compelling study of a widespread and dreaded disease that haunted the lives of Dickinson and her contemporaries.

Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin

"Mamunes argues convincingly...in a book filled with haunting stories, Mamunes draws evidence from medical records, Amherst archives, popular fiction, and even Benjamin Newton's probate records to cast fresh perspective on Dickinson's explosive artistic achievement."

author of Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation and editor of An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia - Jane Donahue Eberwein