Pale Shadows

When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, she left hundreds of poems scribbled on scraps of paper, which her sister Lavinia discovers with amazement. Lavinia entrusts their publication to Mabel Loomis Todd, the mistress of their brother. Without these two women, and without Susan Gilbert Dickinson, Emily's sister-in-law and beloved friend, the world would never have known this phantom body of work. Taking up the story where Les villes de papier ended, the novel tells how a book was born years after its author's death, and asks what remains of us when we are gone and what power books hold over our lives.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

248 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, 1880s–1890s

First published

2022 by Éditions Alto

Author's age

50 when first published

ISBN

9782896945184 (original)

9781552454688 (Coach House Books, Canada)