The country's most noted writers, poets, and artists converge at a singular moment in American life, a great companion to fans of the film A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson.
At the close of the Civil War, the lives of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade intersected in an intricate map of friendship, family, and romance that marked a milestone in the development of American art and literature. Using the image of a flitting hummingbird as a metaphor for the gossamer strands that connect these larger-than-life personalities, Christopher Benfey re-creates the summer of 1882, the summer when Mabel Louise Todd-the protégé to the painter Heade-confesses her love for Emily Dickinson's brother, Austin, and the players suddenly find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all.
- ISBN10 0143115081
- ISBN13 9780143115083
- Publish Date 31 March 2009 (first published 17 April 2008)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
- Imprint The Penguin Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 304
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780143115083