The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, edited by Bonnie Costello, Celeste Goodridge, and Cristanne Miller. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, 1997, cloth $35, xv, 597; index; ISBN 0-679-43909-9; paperback $15.95. ISBN 0-14-118120-6
Marianne Moore arrived in Carlisle with her mother and brother in 1896. She was eight years old. She left for good, except for occasional visits, twenty years later in 1916. By then, she was a property owner, a college graduate, and a confirmed Presbyterian for life. She had proven herself employable. She had acquired lifelong friendships. In Carlisle she had formed her ambition to be a writer: initially a novelist, then a journalist, and finally a poet. She had absorbed and later refined a perspective of the world that, expressed in poetry, made her one of the most eminent and influential American poets of the twentieth century.
These simple yet suggestive facts continue to baffle her biographers and critics. No one has worked to offer a proper evaluation of her life in Carlisle. Even in this long-awaited sampling of Moore's correspondence, Carlisle gets short shrift. Despite dozens of specific references, "Carlisle" is not indexed. Errors of fact are set forth with a confident air. A few early ones may alarm any reader with minimal local knowledge: Carlisle is not "nearby" to Pittsburgh; a "manse" is what pastors live in, not a unique name for a house; Sterrett's Gap is a geographical place, not a town.
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