Nobody has a good word to say about Mabel Loomis Todd. When she’s remembered at all, it’s as a homewrecker: the vamp who seduced Emily Dickinson’s brother, Austin, 27 years her senior, and destroyed his marriage to Susan Gilbert, Emily’s closest confidante. Like any good seductress, Todd was an opportunist. She exploited Austin’s role as the treasurer of...
After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet by Julie Dobrow. The first woman to receive a doctorate in geography from Harvard, Millicent Bingham sacrificed her academic career to finish the editorial work her mother, Mabel Loomis Todd, began. Readers may not agree with the version of Emily Dickinson they presented, or approve of the changes they made to her work, but if it hadn’t been for these two women, we might not have any Emily Dickinson at all.