When Emily died in 1886, her sister Lavinia found the large collection of poems hidden in Emily’s desk drawers and begged Sue for help in putting together a collection. If you were here - and Oh that you were, my Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us, and your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language - I try to bring you nearer, I chase the weeks away till they are quite departed, and fancy you have come, and I am on my way through the green lane to meet you, and my heart goes scampering so, that I have much ado to bring it back again, and learn it to be patient, till that dear Susie comes.īut beyond these letters, no evidence exists of an off-paper romance. Watching from her now-famous windowed bedroom, Emily wrote of seeing her sister-in-law come and go from the house next door: Rereading these letters, historians have wondered if there was something more to the relationship (“I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there! Dont let them see, will you Susie?” Emily wrote in one). The two traded these letters for decades, and even as family drama threatened to tear the Dickinsons apart (Austin embarked upon a very public affair with Emily’s future editor Sue mourned the loss of a young son and the demise of her marriage), Emily and Sue kept up their passionate correspondence. The poet considered Sue her only confidante, and she began writing her sister-in-law long, passionate letters, often including drafts of future poems and asking Sue for edits and thoughts. But when Emily’s brother Austin proposed to Sue and the newlyweds moved into a brand-new mansion next door, everything about the relationship between these two women changed.Īs her poetry absorbed more and more of her time, Emily’s legendary reclusion pushed her away from family and friends - but not from Sue. As smart girls living in Amherst, Massachusetts, they bonded over their shared love of books and philosophy.

When the two first met, in 1850, they became fast friends. More than 500 letters, a family reputation, a salacious affair and 36 years of friendship (or something more) - there’s lots to examine in the relationship between renowned poet Emily Dickinson and her “biggest heart” (her sister-in-law Sue).

Emily dickinson susan huntington