According to the book jacket, Mrs. Patterson has long been an admirer of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. In the avidity of her search for “proof” she appears to have mislaid it, as well as a few more considerations: the possibility that a poet may write from sources other than autobiographical, the perfectly real enjoyment in living expressed in many of the poems, the satisfaction that Emily Dickinson must have felt in her work, no matter what, and, quite simply, the more demonstrative manners of another period….

These 400 pages are still many sizes too small for Emily Dickinson’s work. Whether one likes her poetry or not, whether it wrings one’s heart or sets one’s teeth on edge, nevertheless it exists, and in a world far removed from the defenseless people and events described in this infuriating book.

Elizabeth Bishop, “Unseemly Deductions: A review of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson, by Rebecca Patterson.” From The New Republic, August 18, 1952.