The Gardens of Emily Dickinson

by Judith Farr, Louise Carter (Contribution by)

In this first substantial study of Emily Dickinson's devotion to flowers and gardening, Judith Farr seeks to join both poet and gardener in one creative personality. She casts new light on Dickinson's temperament, her aesthetic sensibility, and her vision of the relationship between art and nature, revealing that the successful gardener's intimate understanding of horticulture helped shape the poet's choice of metaphors for every experience: love and hate, wickedness and virtue, death and immortality.

Gardening, Farr demonstrates, was Dickinson's other vocation, more public than the making of poems but analogous and closely related to it. Over a third of Dickinson's poems and nearly half of her letters allude with passionate intensity to her favorite wildflowers, to traditional blooms like the daisy or gentian, and to the exotic gardenias and jasmines of her conservatory. Each flower was assigned specific connotations by the nineteenth century floral dictionaries she knew; thus, Dickinson's association of various flowers with friends, family, and lovers, like the tropes and scenarios presented in her poems, establishes her participation in the literary and painterly culture of her day. A chapter, "Gardening with Emily Dickinson" by Louise Carter, cites family letters and memoirs to conjecture the kinds of flowers contained in the poet's indoor and outdoor gardens. Carter hypothesizes Dickinson's methods of gardening, explaining how one might grow her flowers today.

Beautifully illustrated and written with verve, "The Gardens of Emily Dickinson" will provide pleasure and insight to a wide audience of scholars, admirers of Dickinson's poetry, and garden lovers everywhere.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Poetry, History, Biography, Nature, Art

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2004

Reviews

[Daphne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite biography of Emily Dickinson. It says just enough, but not too much, about who this wonderful woman might have been. The fact that the hardcover edition is filled with incredible pictures and descriptions of Dickinson's garden is, of course, an added delight. Farr's book is a treaure.

[Taylor Shelton · Rating 4 out of 5]

i fucking love emily dickinson, the book was good and it had an amazing perspective. emily uses eden as a reference to like an ideal state or place, which in my opinion is slay queen girlboss. anyways it's used to show her desire and temptations, she's so smart for this. however it shocked me that the line in a letter to sue which says "Susan! I would have come out of Eden to open the door for you if I had known you were there" did not make it in the book. i kind of wish there were more sue mentions cause in a way sue was like an unattainable eden BUT OTHER THAN THAT IT WAS FIRE I ENJOYED DA FUQ.

[The Starry Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a garden lover myself, I really appreciated this book for its love letter to all things nature, gardens and flowers. As a somewhat reclusive character, there is something about the stillness of a garden that perfectly mirrors Miss Dickinson's life. Too often I feel that people have been unfairly critical towards Emily Dickinson's life. This book puts into persepective the whole idea that just like a flower who flourishes when in the right environment, Emily Dickinson's talent, also blossomed into its own.

[Cliff Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always thought of Emily Dickinson only as the mysterious author of obscure and hard-to-understand poetry. Through this beautiful book, I've come to know her much better and to appreciate her genius and her love of life much better.

[Brittney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative yet highly subjective. Farr also uses quotation marks way too often. I have to think there is a better way for going about what she wants to accomplish.

[Mags · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book I read during my Senior Seminar on Emily Dickinson. I think it actually brought out an interesting side of Dickinson that we had only brushed on in the seminar. It wasn't the most exciting read or most exciting paper I wrote on it, but it did provide another layer to Dickinson that also helped with understanding some of her symbolism in poetry as well as just getting to know Dickinson better and seem like a real person

[Linda Rowlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a dense, well-written, and detailed discussion of the poet Emily Dickinson and her gardens — the actual flowers that she grew and tended as well as the meanings of flowers and gardens in her poems.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favourite book I've read for my dissertation. Initially all I wanted was to read one chapter, but I could not put it down and ended up reading the whole thing. It's so informative, engaging, and eloquent.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but not to my taste. It seemed over long.

[Caitlin Buxbaum]

DNF

[sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

genuinely going to go grow some heliotrope in my backyard

[Anima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Words and reproductions of Emily's beloved flowers - what an ingenious way to put together ethereal and earthy structures to reconstruct the beauty of a poet who let her soul touch so many poems. The book itself is an impressive floral landscape. In the love poems, the garden stays as a symbol for the delight spread by romantic feelings. I liked the images from Dickinson' s ' Herbariums', which so clearly tell us about a profound passion for flowers- she meticulously labeled more than 400 flowers and plants and pressed them in special designed books.

"Every bird that sings, and every bud that blooms, does but remind me more of that garden unseen awaiting the hand that tills it."

[False · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this book before I even finished it, knowing I would want it as part of my Emily Dickinson collection. An academic work, published by a professor at a former university, it is an in-depth study of the importance of flowers, gardens and landscaping not only to the New England Transcendentalists, but also to Emily herself, to women of her era, and to the later Victorians. It critiques and shows the importance of flower language to Dickinson and her poetic colleagues, as well as the symbolism of flowers in that era. There is also a very practical section on gardening of the flowers given particular focus. Highly recommended.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emily Dickinson seemed a very unusual and strange woman for the time period she lived in. I think she would have fit into our present society much better, and possibly would have had a more fulfilling life.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

How many ways can the author say, "She loved flowers?"....

[Marilyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I give up... this plods ar best through the muiltitude of meanings of individual flowers. Maybe some other time it will strike my fancy.

[Christine Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd rate this book higher if the soft-copy didn't have to constantly refer to the hard-copy: " to see picture, refer to printed version of book."

[Judith Cartisano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodness this was a slow read. Although I found much of the information interesting, the book was just too dry for me.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense text on Emily Dickinson's love of flowers, her use of them in her poetry, and the connection of those poems to her real life circumstances. I found it hard going.

The best chapter was Louise Carter's Gardening with Emily Dickinson, which read more like a helpful account of Emily Dickinson's gardens and less like a doctoral thesis.

Farr has one irritating habit which I don't really understand. She puts words in parentheses in the middle of sentences, like this one: "She had at least two (unconsummated) love affairs with men... ." (p. 34). No one actually knows if Emily Dickinson had a consummated love affair, and if the author somehow knows the two specific relationships she mentions were unconsummated, why put the word in parentheses? I found this writing habit head scratching and very annoying.

This book was clearly thoroughly researched, I just didn't find it very readable. I enjoyed the art and photos that were included and the snippets of Dickinson poetry.