A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain , Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade

by Christopher Benfey

Hardcover, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

811.4

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Nonfiction

Collection

First Edition

Publication

Penguin Press (2008), 304 pages

Description

A surprising and scandalous story of how the interaction within a group of exceptional and uniquely talented characters shaped and changed American thought at the close of the Civil War. Benfey takes the seemingly arbitrary image of the hummingbird and traces its "route of evanescence" as it travels in circles to and from the creative wellsprings of the age: from the naturalist writings of abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson to the poems of his wayward pupil Emily Dickinson; into the mind of Henry Ward Beecher and within the writings and paintings of his famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. A Summer of Hummingbirds unveils how, through the art of these great thinkers, the hummingbird became the symbol of an era, an image through which they could explore their controversial (and often contradictory) ideas of nature, religion, sexuality, family, time, exoticism, and beauty.--From amazon.com.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Ellouise

This is a mildly interesting book if you are a Civil War buff and a Harriet Beecher Stowe fan, which I am. I know few people that would be interested in the book. I enjoyed the references of Emily Dickinson, Heade, Harriet Beecher Stowe to hummingbirds.

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LibraryThing member smilingturtle

I enjoyed the meanderings of these acquaintances, discovering and searching out the paintings of Heade, insights into Emily Dickinson, and the unknown-to-me Florida and Brazil connections of some of these folks. Like another reviewer, I don't know who else would be interested, but I heartily

recommend it to those fascinated by 19th century American culture and in the role of the Civil War in shifting the American intellectual climate. All of that being said, I found the book easy to read, quite clever and spritely as characters and their associations come to light!

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LibraryThing member edwinbcn

A summer of hummingbirds. Love, art, and scandal in the intersecting worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade is a work of literary criticism and history, focussing mainly on the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe and the American painter Martin Johnson Heade

in the period shortly after the American Civil War. A couple of other literary figures, among whom Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson are featured. The book forms an interesting description of the period, bringing together authors who were obviously contemporaries but are not often discussed together. However, the motive of the hummingbird throughout the book as a kind of metaphor for the light, fluttery sexual promiscuity of the age, personified by Lord Byron was rather disturbing, and laid on too thickly. Still, the book will be attractive to readers with an interest in the period and these authors, and particularly delightful to those unfamiliar with the painting of Martin Johnson Heade.

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LibraryThing member gayla.bassham

More like 3 1/2 stars. Interesting account of the connections among leading literary lights in the nineteenth-century US, but I think the hummingbird connection was a stretch.

LibraryThing member dasam

A quirky reweaving of the lives that wove around Emily Dickenson, that brilliant recluse. Benfey talks of love and scandal, friendship and mutual inspiration, and images of hummingbirds and arbutus. Certainly worth reading if you are interested in the art and lives of Dickenson, Harriet Beecher

Stowe, Martin Johnson Heade, and to a lesser extent Mark Twain.

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LibraryThing member librisissimo

Fascinating story of how the lives of so many important people in American literature, art, and history entwined, like vines, and how many of them shared an interest in hummingbirds.
More people are part of the story than just the four in the title; all of their families figured into the history,

and not a few other celebrities. Twain does not figure as heavily as the rest, especially the Beechers and the Dickinsons; Heade was unknown to me. Mabel Loomis Todd and her husband David, as well as Victoria Woodhull, also figure in the affairs (literally) of the main subjects. Lord Byron and his wife are off-stage actors, but still important.

Art, passion, love, adultery, romance, poetry and everything else.
The only complaint I have is not unique to this writer: skipping around among so many people at different times, and in different places, became very confusing, especially when an episode involving some of them was described before an earlier episode involving someone else.
A timeline of important dates would have been very helpful. Also,for someone not a close student or aficionado of the period, the places the author mentions need to be located on a map.
There are some black & white illustrations taken from the works of some of the subjects. No illustrator is credited that I could see.

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