Friend and Neighbor

Who was MacGregor Jenkins?

Well, as a child, he lived near Emily Dickinson, and in 1930 he published a biography of the poet called “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.”  

I don’t know much more than that, and I found very little about him on the Internet (not even a Wikipedia article, LOL).​

As the result of a Google-search, I did find one site with a little bit of info on him, but now the link isn’t working.  When I click on it, it says “Internal Server Error” – although you can see the start of the page in the pic below.  (MACGREGOR JENKINS).

The link -- in case the site corrects the “Internal Error” -- is HERE. 

Jenkins was a writer, and he authored about 8 books – titles can be found HERE.

He also published a number of stories “The Atlantic.”  Info related to that is linked HERE.

On my recent trip out west, I downloaded Jenkin’s book about Dickinson on my phone, and I read it on my flight back from Denver.  To access the book, click HERE. 

As you know, the first volumes of Dickinson’s poetry were published posthumously in the 1890s, and the image of Dickinson that was emerging in the early 1900s was not completely accurate (there was a feud – and later a court case – going on between different factions of the family, one side headed by Austin Dickinson’s lover, Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter, and the other side comprised of Emily’s sister Lavinia, her sister-in-law Susan, and Susan’s daughter Martha). 

MacGregor Jenkins was a childhood friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson, and in his book he said, “It is indeed the object of this slender volume to dispel, if possible, some of this cloud of fable and to make Miss. Emily a more human and more understandable person.”
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More on Jenkins’ book tomorrow!  (UPDATE:  FOR PART 2, CLICK HERE.)