ldquo;IF YOU COULD make the public understand,” Charles Dickens’s daughter Katey wrote in a letter to Bernard Shaw, “that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and ...

IN THE DECADE following Emily Dickinson’s death, most of her correspondence went up in flames. Lavinia Dickinson, the poet’s sister and companion, followed Emily’s directives and burned the entire cache of letters that the poet ...