Mabel Loomis Todd

Mabel Loomis Todd ( Loomis; November 10, 1856 – October 14, 1932) was an American editor and writer. She is remembered as the editor of posthumously published editions of Emily Dickinson's poetry and letters. She wrote several novels and books about her travels with her husband, astronomer David Peck Todd, as well as co-authoring a textbook on astronomy.

Todd's relationship to the Dickinson family was complicated. She had a lengthy affair with Emily's married older brother William Austin Dickinson. In preparing Emily's poetry for publication, which was also marred by family controversies, "she and co-editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson altered words, changed Dickinson's punctuation, capitalization and syntax to make her poetry closer to the conventions of 19th century verse. Perhaps most controversially, they gave names to poems that originally bore none (of Dickinson's close to 2000 known poems, perhaps only a dozen were given names by the poet, herself)."

Biography

She was born Mabel Loomis on November 10, 1856, the daughter of Mary Alden Wilder and Eben Jenks Loomis. Though her family traced its lineage to such New England luminaries as Priscilla Alden, they led financially difficult lives and Mabel spent much of her childhood in boardinghouses in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. She graduated from Georgetown Female Seminary in Washington, then studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

She met astronomer David Peck Todd in 1877, and evidently knew he was a philanderer even before their wedding on March 5, 1879. Mrs. Todd had a passionate sexual nature and wrote freely about it. She wrote soon after her marriage: "Sweet communions. Oh joy! Oh! Bliss unutterable" and "A little Heaven just after dinner." The couple had one daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham (1880–1968).

They moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1881, where her husband had been offered a position as astronomy professor at his alma mater, Amherst College.

In Amherst Todd sketched eclipses during her travels, which she published in her 1894 book Total Eclipses of the Sun. In 1882, Todd began a 13-year affair with Austin Dickinson, the (married) brother of Emily Dickinson; Austin was a prominent local lawyer who served as treasurer of Amherst College. They took private trips to the country together, spent time together in Boston, and wrote love letters to each other. Though they tried to conceal the affair, many people were aware of it. Todd and Dickinson were convinced that their love was above the morals of the day; Mabel once wrote that she thought things might have been different "had we been born one or two hundred years" later.

Mabel Loomis Todd died of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 14, 1932, on Hog Island, Maine. She and David are buried in Wildwood Cemetery, Amherst, Massachusetts, in a plot near Austin Dickinson's family plot.

Editor of Dickinson's poetry

Todd never met Emily Dickinson, though the two women exchanged letters. The influence of Mabel Loomis Todd in the world of Dickinson scholarship has been much debated.

The relationship between Todd and the Dickinson family, however, proved difficult. Emily's younger sister Lavinia, who controlled the copyright of the poems, wanted to give royalty payments to Todd herself instead of having the publisher divide proceeds. In fact, for the work Todd did on three volumes of Emily Dickinson's poetry and two volumes of letters, she received a total of $200 from Lavinia. In 1896, Todd and the Dickinson family had a falling-out over a legal battle regarding property owned by Austin Dickinson. Austin had left Todd and her husband a strip of his land and Lavinia had begun the process to make it legal before changing her mind and suing them in 1898 for the claim. She won the lawsuit but Todd refused to continue the project during Lavinia's lifetime. As a result of their disagreements, Emily Dickinson's manuscripts were split between the two families.

Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the poet's niece, inherited the poet's manuscripts from her mother Susan, except for those in Todd's possession. Between 1913 and 1937, she produced six books of Emily's poetry and two biographies, occasionally with assistance from Alfred Leete Hampton. Todd, upset at the rival publications and assuming only she had legal rights to Emily's works, released an updated edition of her compilation in 1931. In 1945, Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham published some of the poems from Todd's portion of the manuscripts. By 1955, she had published three more books about the life and works of the Amherst poet.

Works Original works

Edited volumes Todd, Mabel Loomis, ed. (1896) A Cycle of Sonnets. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Poems of Emily Dickinson

Letters of Emily Dickinson

Other poems

Articles (selected)

Manuscripts