White Heat (English)

In this intriguing new addition to biographical work on Emily Dickinson, Brenda Wineapple explores Dickinson's fierce friendship with the radical abolitionist and women's suffrage activist Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higgins. After reading his political speeches, Dickinson wrote to Higgins to seek his critique and guidance on her verse. Though he was preparing to go to battle with the first Union battalion of freed slaves, Higgins responded to her powerful poetry. Over the years, he shifted roles from a teacher to a devotee, and after Dickinson's death, he become one of the most ardent advocates of her solitary genius. In 2008 WHITE HEAT was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book and as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the Biography category. minimize