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.
A good companion to "American Bloomsbury" by Susan Cheever, chronicling the lives of the Emersons, Hawthornes, Alcotts, Thoreau, and others. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )