Lyndall Gordon, an award-winning biographer, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination.

Some 1,131 letters—released by Princeton University’s Firestone Library only in 2020—show us in exquisite detail the hidden T.S. Eliot. Gordon plumbs the archive to recast Emily Hale’s role as the first and foremost woman of the poet’s life, tracing the ways in which their ardor and his idealization of her figured in his art.