Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (December 19, 1830 – May 12, 1913) was a writer, poet, traveler, and editor, as well as the sister in law of the American poet Emily Dickinson. Born in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts Susan was the youngest of six children, born to Thomas and Harriet Arms Gilbert.

Susan Huntington Gilbert was born December 19, 1830. She was orphaned by the time she was eleven years old, after her mother died in 1837 and her father in 1841. From that time until the late 1840s, when she came to live in Amherst with her sister Harriet and brother-in-law William Cutler, Susan was reared by her aunt, Sophia Arms Van Vranken, in Geneva, New York, where she attended Utica Female Academy. Susan did attend Amherst Academy while she was living with her sister Harriet, but only for one semester in the fall of 1847. In 1853 she and Austin Dickinson were engaged, and then married July 1, 1856, in the Van Vranken home, "a quiet wedding", with "very few friends and [only Susan's] brothers & sisters, a little cake–a little ice cream." Though the young couple contemplated moving West, to Michigan, where Susan's older brothers lived, Edward Dickinson ensured their never leaving Amherst by making Austin a law partner and by building them a made-to-order house, the Evergreens, on a lot next door to the Homestead. Susan's generous dowry from her brothers helped to furnish the Evergreens, a showcase with oak sideboards, a green marble fireplace adorned with Antonio Canova's sculpture Cupid and Psyche, Gothic chairs, and Victorian paintings where the young wife-to-be imagined treating her brothers to "an oyster supper some cold night" (August 1855 letter). The Evergreens was where she entertained most guests. Susan and Austin had three children:

Both of her sons preceded Susan in death (Gib in 1883 and Ned in 1898).

Susan has been called the "most graceful woman in Western Massachusetts", "astute and cosmopolitan", "The Power" increasingly given to "frivolity, snobbery, and ruthlessness", a "sensitive editor" who was Emily's "most responsive reader", a "remarkably perceptive... mentor of some standing" who supposedly refused to edit Emily's poems for publication.

...
Wikipedia