A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfey

A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfey

The country's most noted writers, poets, and artists converge at a singular moment in American life, a great companion to fans of the film A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson. 

At the close of the Civil War, the lives of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade intersected in an intricate map of friendship, family, and romance that marked a milestone in the development of American art and literature. Using the image of a flitting hummingbird as a metaphor for the gossamer strands that connect these larger-than-life personalities, Christopher Benfey re-creates the summer of 1882, the summer when Mabel Louise Todd-the protégé to the painter Heade-confesses her love for Emily Dickinson's brother, Austin, and the players suddenly find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all.

Mount Holyoke College's Christopher Benfey is the Mellon Professor of English. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books. A Summer of Hummingbirds, which won the Christian Gauss Prize from Phi Beta Kappa, is one of Benfey's four books about the American Gilded Period. He is a resident of Amherst, Massachusetts.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780143115083
ISBN 10	0143115081
Title	A Summer of Hummingbirds
Author	Christopher Benfey
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2009-03-31
Number of pages	304
Prizes	Winner of Ambassador Book Award.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.