Product Description

Here for the first time is the poetry of Emily Dickinson as she herself "published" it in the privacy of her upstairs room in the house in Amherst.

She invented her own form of bookmaking. Her first drafts, jotted on odd scraps of paper, were discarded when transcribed. Completed poems were neatly copied in ink on sheets of folded stationery which she arranged in groups, usually of sixteen to twenty-four pages, and sewed together into packets or fascicles. These manuscript books were her private mode of publication, a substitute perhaps for the public mode that, for reasons unexplained, she denied herself. In recent years there has been increasing interest in the fascicles as artistic gathering, intrarelated by theme, imagery, or emotional movement. But no edition in the past, not even the variorum, or has arranged the poems in the sequence in which they appear in the manuscript books.

Emily Dickinson's poems, more than those of any other poet, resist translation into the medium of print. Since she never saw a manuscript through the press, we cannot tell how she would have adapted for print her unusual capitalization, punctuation, line and stanza divisions, and alternate readings. The feather-light punctuation, in particular, is misrepresented when converted to conventional stop or even to dashes.

This elegant edition presents all of Emily Dickinson's manuscript books and unsewn fascicle sheets--1,148 poems on 1,250 pages--restored insofar as possible to their original order, as they were when her sister found them after her death. The manuscripts are reproduced with startling fidelity in 300-line screen. Every detail is preserved: the bosses on the stationery, the sewing holes and tears, and poet's alternate reading and penciled revisions, ink spots and other stains offset onto adjacent leaves, and later markings by Susan Dickinson, Mabel Todd, and others. The experience of reading these facsimile pages is virtually the same as reading the manuscripts themselves.

Supplementary information is provided in introductions, notes, and appendices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

It's Back in Print!
If you missed a chance to buy this invaluable Dickinson resource the first time around, don't despair.It is available once again from Harvard University Press as a hardcover, print-on-demand title ($[...]).The type font, illustrations, and paper opacity are identical to that of the first edition, but the bindings may differ somewhat.For Dickinson enthusiasts and scholars alike, it is a great way to obtain this indispensible set at a reasonable price. See the details at: [...]

Writing as performance
Since Gutenberg, we have fixed our attention on the regularity of type, of perfectly redundant print. This digitization of written expression is not without cost. Our tendency with print is to forget the material form of the expression, its path in reaching us, and the clues available in the holographic. Still we value the signature and the written note from an intimate. ED's compositions depend in part upon the concrete aspects -- visual and expressive -- of her particular inscriptions. These are as variable and ambiguous as her syntax and equally worth the effort to decode. Take a poem you already know and love and read it in manuscript: yet another delight will emerge.

A jewel for the collection of all Dickinson enthusiasts.
THE MANUSCRIPT BOOKS OF EMILY DICKINSON.Edited by R. W. Franklin.2 vols, 1442 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-674-54828-0 (hbk.)

What do we mean when we speak of "an Emily Dickinson poem" ?If you think about it, we could mean one of at least five different things. We may be referring :

(1) to her poems as they are found in her original manuscripts;

(2) to their photographic facsimiles as in the present edition;

(3) to the Variorum editions of Thomas H. Johnson or R. W. Franklinwhich attempt to get over into typographic form as much asthey can of her highly idiosyncratic manuscript drafts - with all of their variants and their peculiarities of line breaks, spacing, punctuation, and of alternate words about which she never made up her mind but placed neatly alongside or beneath many of her poems;

(4) to the reader's editions of Johnson and Franklin which offer what these Dickinson scholars and expert editors feel is _one_ (of many possible) sensible and acceptable readings out of the mass of variants;

(5) or finally we may be referring to her poems as altered, revised, regularized, tidied-up and smoothed out so as to be made to look more'normal' and acceptable to ordinary readers.At this fifth and furthestremove from ED's own drafts, we are given a text by a towering geniusas modified by someone who was far less than a genius, and who has usuallydamaged the poem in various ways.

The present 2-volume set of 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' brings us as close to the real thing as most of us will ever get.It gives us photographic facsimiles, with full scholarly apparatus, not of all of her poems but of those she bound into forty fascicles, tiny hand-stitched manuscript-books that she squirreled away in her room and that were not to be discovered until after her death many years later.

Here you can see how her strange handwriting changed radically overthe years.Here you can see all of the peculiarities of her spelling. Here you can see all those little asterisks which sheused to indicate an alternate word elsewhere on the page, usually atthe foot.Here you can also see all of her line breaks and her idiosyncrasies of spacing, both of which are often highly significant. Here, in a word, you can see the hand of a genius at work.

Personally I think we are extremely fortunate to have these twovolumes, and that all lovers of ED's amazing poems, poems that are one of the wonders of the world, should be grateful to R. W. Franklinfor the arduous labors that must have gone into his impeccable edition, an edition with full scholarly apparatus that provides a wealth of fascinating information about the forty fascicles.

The two large, heavy and sturdy volumes are stitched, bound in half cloth, beautifully printed on a very strong, smooth, ivory tintedpaper that we are told is the finest paper in the world and I can well believe it, and they come in a buckram-covered box.

It's clear that no pains have been spared to give us, not only accurate and annotatedphotographic facsimiles of every page of the Manuscript Books, butalso to give them to us in sturdy and beautiful volumes that are afitting vehicle for the works of the amazing woman we know as EmilyDickinson.How astounded and gratified she would have been to haveseen this set, a set that would warm the heart of any bibliophile, and that belongs in the collection of all Dickinson enthusiasts. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

The One The Room Stops For
Occasionally I read a poem that I'm so smitten with that I wanted to be the one who wrote it. "I Try to Plagiarize Moonlight," from Kelli Russell Agodon's newest book, Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press Poetry Prize) was such a poem. While I coveted that poem upon reading it, Agodon's wit and word muscle was not lost on this one poem.

Agodon dissects both a pig and depression. She offers survival techniques when you've fallen through the ice, to a lover when they really needed instructions for relationship survival.

She sews poverty to her blouse, found Jesus under her covers, has faith stuck to the "Roof of her house" and it has its own ringtone. This is an indelible manuscript that teeters between life's lessons and life's humor.She takes the Tasmanian devil as a life coach and becomes "the person the room stops for".

In a room full of poetry books, I would recommend Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press Poetry Prize) as one book to stop for.
... Read more

Product Description
Includes both poems and letters of Dickenson, as well as a contemporary description of the poet in Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of his correspondence with the poet and his visit to her in Amherst. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

When the Student is Greater Than the Teacher
Emily Dickinson chose the wrong teacher when she reached out to Thomas Higginson, who was writing in the Atlantic Monthly, in the early 1860s.She asked him, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?"She included original verse in her letter to Higginson challenging him deeply with her brilliance, depth of emotion, and astounding writing ability.Higginson seemed almost at a loss for words.This early letter, arriving in 1862, would be the beginning of a lifelong correspondence between Dickinson and Higginson.

He was disturbed by her offbeat and radical use of punctuation.His sagely but confused advice to her was to get more in line with standard punctuation.He understood correctly that Emily Dickinson was a unique-- possibly unprecedented voice in American Letters.But, he didn't understand quite enough the greatness that Dickinson's poetry represented.

Emily Dickinson is something of a tragic figure, apparently suffering from some kind of agoraphobia and an extreme shyness.She rarely left the grounds of her father's Amherst home.Higginson would only meet her twice in his life and he would describe the first meeting as follows, "The impression undoubtedly made of me was that of an excess of tension, and of something abnormal".He described her as needing help in solving "her abstruse problem of life". He described their meeting as the most disturbing meeting of his life.He said, "an instinct told me that the slightest attempt at direct cross examination would make her withdraw into her shell".

Reading Dickinson is challenging on so many levels.Her brilliance is almost shattering to the reader. Her ability to weave images, analogies, references, and emotion into her verse evokes deep responses from readers who care to meet her very weighty intellectual challenge.The sadness and depth of feeling in her work pours out of the page and seems to almost grab one by the heart and soul and throat.

Dickinson truly demands our attention and she gets it.

Her personal world was a small one but the places that her heart and intellect traveled certainly must have included the entire universe.She's not easy to read, but she is easy to love.She is a woman of grand skill and has a way of expression that make her timeless.She loved flowers and gardening and the grass and talked often in her work of life and so many deep frustrations of unfulfilled dreams and a deep core broken sadness that resulted from the deaths of family members around her.Only after her death did the world get to appreciate her incredible talent and skill.As a poet and correspondent, she is in the highest pantheon of American literature.

She would not know much fame in her life, but she is now immortal.

This is an excellent selection of her letters and poetry.The most important aspect of this particular book is that unlike other editors, this editor has chosen to leave Dickinson's unorthodox punctuation as she wrote it.In this case, the editor did very little editing and, in standing back and taking a more passive role, he has done a great service to everyone interested in Dickinson's work.

Her poetry and her prose appear so simple, yet are so complex and difficult to fathom.Her constructions, word choices, and comparisons can be very challenging for a modern reader, but they do sing.It seems so strange that Higginson would not actively pursue publication for Dickinson during her life.I think Dickinson challenged Higginson on so many levels and this was not an unusual effect that she had on people.It's seems a shame that Dickinson didn't enjoy the fame that she deserved during her life.

"For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.

For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears."

Many of Dickinson's poems are untitled including the poem above but it is still powerful and beautiful. Dickinson wears her emotions so clearly and so proudly, it's no wonder that people needing her would be uncomfortable.She is one of these lonely aesthetes whose soul and mind is so expansive, and whose mind is so flooded with words and thoughts, that those in her presence can readily be overwhelmed. In Higginson's case, she probably didn't even have to speak to make him uncomfortable.

If Emily Dickinson had written her introductory letter to another writer or critic rather than Thomas Higginson, is it likely that she would have enjoyed fame and plaudits during her lifetime for her grand and deep poetry?Or, is it possible that Dickinson was ahead of her time, born too early into a society that just couldn't understand what she was trying to say?

I think that one has to have a little bit of sympathy for Higginson. It's not his fault, really, that he just didn't have the requisite depth of comprehension when Dickinson first approached him and throughout the ensuing years. It is clear to us reading Dickinson and Higginson's letters and his own writing, that Emily is the far brighter light of the two writers.Even at the very start of the relationship, when Dickinson asked for guidance, it was obvious that Dickinson was already the master and Higginson only a luckily-placed writer in a national magazine.

Emily Dickinson's first letter to Thomas Higginson must have come as something as a slap across the head-- he tried his best and they remained friends until Emily's death.He encouraged her and they were friends.But, perhaps there was more that he should have and could have done that he didn't.In his defense, what does one truly do when the universe arrives in a letter?

A Mystery
I have come to believe that Emily Dickinson is the greatest writer America has produced. Unfortunately, the poet remained in anonymity and so went without constructive criticism. Her poems, while splendid, were not of thedepth of Whitman nor the pleasure of Longfellow. They did not"live" like Poe's. But they lived; only heavier in breath. So itis not her poetry that we look at to find America's greatest writer, it isthese wonderful letters. At thirteen her imagery is as complicated asMailer or Morrison might ever be. And in our age of television, no geniuswill surpass these imaginings. To read Emily is to fall in love with her.Certainly misunderstood. Unapreciated. My copy of this books is weatheredlike a Baptist preachers Bible. It is my favorite book of all time. Emilyis my favorite writer. Not everyone I recomend this book too enjoys it asmuch as I, but please try. You may find something special. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Were ED's letters every bit as great an artistic achievement as her poems?
Emily Dickinson was a great letter writer, in all senses of the word. In fact one gets the impression that she actually preferred writing to people, than meeting and conversing with them, and for her the arrival of a letter was a great event. A letter was something she looked forward to with keen anticipation, and which she savored to the full whenever one arrived.

Although the present collection of letters may seem large, the truth is that it represents only a small proportion of the letters Emily Dickinson actually wrote. She was an inveterate letter-writer, had many correspondents, and wrote thousands of letters. And people in those days collected letters just as today.

Unfortunately it was the custom, whenever anyone died, to make a bonfire of all of their correspondence, probably because of its confidential and personal nature. In this way thousands of pages of Emily Dickinson's writings have been lost to posterity, and we would know much more aboute the details of her day-to-day life, and be able to date her poems more accurately, if it hadn't been for this sad loss.

Just how great the loss is may be gaged by taking a look at the way Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith have treated her letters in Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Whereas Thomas Johnson prints all of ED's letters as straight prose, which of course leads us to read them as straight prose, Hart-Smith give us the letters as they actually appear in the original draft - not as continous lines of prose but as very short lines with numerous line breaks - in other words, as poetry.

It would seem that many of ED's 'letters' are not so much letters as 'letter-poems,' and when read as poems produce a remarkable range of effects that are lost when all line breaks are removed and the letter is regularized as straight prose. The loss of her letters now begins to look much more serious, for the feeling seems to be growing amomg readers that the letters were every bit as great an artistic achievement as her poems.

Although there have been a number of books offering selections from ED's letters, so far as I know, Thomas H. Johnson, the well-known editor of the first Variorum edition of 'The Poems of Emily Dickinson (3 vols, Cambridge, 1955), is the only person to have given us a fairly complete edition of the letters.

As such, this becomes a book that belongs in the collection of all serious students of ED, although before reading it they might (if they haven't already) take at look at the Hart-Smith, and while reading the Johnson keep it in mind. One wonders how much poetry may be lurking unrecognized in the regularized lines of 'The Letters of Emily Dickinson.'

The softcover edition is very nice
This edition of Letters of Emily Dickinson is a lot better than I expected after reading some reviews. It's actually really nice. The pages are of good quality. The correspondences are arranged chronologically by when they began and a few are accompanied by an image of the original, hand-written letter.

Overall, it's a solid edition. ... Read more

Product Description
The celebrated biographer of Edith Wharton is the first to unravel the intricate relationship between Emily Dickinson's life and her poetry, between the life of her mind and the voice of her poems. 23 photos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Superb
This is the first Emily Dickinson biography I've read so I cannot compare it to others. [At least one reviewer has said this should not be the first biography one reads of Emily; now that I've read it, I can't imagine reading a "beginner's" biography of Emily. The psychological insight this author brings to the table cannot be overstated. Several pages of conversation about non-verbal conversation in the infant-toddler stage is fascinating.]

This biography will take a couple of readings. The author has fashioned a narrative of Emily's life, her poetry, the waning of the New England Puritanism, and the history of Amherst all in one exceptionally well-researched biography.

The first reading provided a tremendous overview of Emily's life and her lifelong struggle with God, but the analysis of her poetry was often way beyond what I could understand, and thus will require several more readings.

Anyone who says they feel they "know" Emily Dickinson is suspect; she remains as much an enigma as ever. Having said that, I feel I have a much better perspective of Emily and am eager to tackle her poetry.

The author included a superb 40-page index, an equally superb 52 pages of notes, and a 21-page bibliography. I am very impressed.

Good Stuff
The greatest strength of this biography is found in its interpretations of ED's poems.Wolff is a careful and insightful reader, capable of teasing out many layers of meaning in even the most elliptical pieces.Her analyses sometimes left me breathless; there's a special pleasure in discovering new meanings in familiar poems.

As noted by another reviewer, Wolff does approach this biography with a kind of agenda.She is most interested in demonstrating how Dickinson rebelled (both in work and life) against the Trinitarian Christianity of her upbringing.Wolff really excels here, and her insight is delicious.Wolff also imbues her readings with a feminist tilt; she never descends into theoretical jargon, but her readings are often skewed by her concern with gender.I wasn't bothered by this, since her interpretations still proved fruitful and provocative.Wolff is weakest in describing ED's relationship with her mother; the psychological bent she brings to this rings a bit hollow for me, and she rides her insight about the infant poet's emotional deprivation through the entire work.Her speculation, in my opinion, isn't helpful or needed.

As a life story, this volume isn't quite so complete as it might've been.It's more a work of criticism than biographical scholarship (although Wolff brings much learning to bear in her critiques on ED's work).If you're interested in the specifics of Dickinson's life, I'd recommend starting with Sewall's monumental biography.

It's also worth noting that some critics have disagreed with Wolff's commentary on Dickinson's life, particular the poet's childhood (Wolff's take on it is rather bleak, a conclusion not necessarily supported by the historical records).I'm not a Dickinson scholar, so I can't answer to these arguments.I do love ED's poetry deeply, however, and found this book a compassionate and fascinating read.

Penetrating View of ED's Thought-World and Private Language
Having read (more or less) every biography of Dickinson -- perhaps the greatest poet in English and one of the great literary sensibilities on record -- Cynthia Wolff's is the one which stands out as placing her in the appropriate context.Other biographies (for example, Sewell's) may contain a greater degree of sheer information, but none is so intelligently selective as this.Wolff's scholarship is something one can only marvel at.She attempts to, and succeeds brilliantly at, surrounding Dickinson by her literary and cultural milieu, the revivalist fervor sweeping New England at the time, her familial dynamics, the role of someone of her gender and class at that place and time.Rather than see just the face of Dickinson, a full portrait of her world emerges.

Wolff's readings are unconventional because, quite frankly, she's one of the few who's gone to the trouble of realizing that Dickinson had an ICONOGRAPHY, that certain terms appear with regularity of time and meaning."Ample", "wrestle", "elect", "father", "bird", "bee"-- one can go on and on, if one really looks -- all derive meaning *cumulatively* from Dickinson's poetic work and voluminous, lapidarian correspondence.Many terms are consistently ironic, or mean their opposites; 'reading' the poems without realizing this will produce the kinds of interpretations produced with disappointing regularity by less careful critics.Wolff has drunk it all in, and synthesized it, in a monumental work of decipherment.

This probably shouldn't be the only Dickinson biography one reads.But it should be at the top of any such list.

Emily Dickinson by Cynthia Griffin Wolff
This work should be read by anyone interested in biography, but not for reasons the author might suspect. Here is a perfect example of biography as personal agenda. Here is biography as a skillfully written---butconvoluted---interpretation of the life, letters and poems of EmilyDickinson.

Wolff should have written an editorial and clearly marked itas such.

However, one good service was provided. My friends and I wouldread a poem being discussed by Wolff, and then read her "forced"interpretation of it. We had many hearty laughs. But we also felt genuinepity for Wolff. Is this what she has to do to defend her agenda? Does shehave no other means?

I do not worry about scholars reading this book. Infact they should read it. They will easily discover those parts that areuseful---and there are many---and discard the rest. But what about youngstudents? What of those who do not know Emily and pick this book as theirfirst meeting with her?

Instead, may I suggest they read "TheCapsule of the Mind" by Theodora Ward. It is also a psychological lookat Emily Dickinson. Ward is the granddaughter of Doctor and Mrs. JosiahGilbert Holland, two of Emily's closest friends. Ward was also an assistantto Thomas H. Johnson, Harvard University, the person most responsible forbringing us Emily's letters and poems. In fact, Ward herself was inspiredto become a Dickinson scholar when she discovered sixty-five of Emily'sletters in her family's attic.

Cynthia Wolff, please spare us yourpolitically correct---but factually incorrect---views on EmilyDickinson.

Joe Psarto,Westlake,Ohio

Emily Dickinson by Cynthia Griffin Wolff
This work should be read by anyone interested in biography, but not for reasons the author might suspect. Here is a perfect example of biography as personal agenda. Here is biography as a skillfully written---butconvoluted---interpretation of the life, letters and poems of EmilyDickinson.

Wolff should have written an editorial and clearly marked itas such.

However, one good service was provided. My friends and I wouldread a poem being discussed by Wolff, and then read her "forced"interpretation of it. We had many hearty laughs. But we also felt genuinepity for Wolff. Is this what she has to do to defend her agenda? Does shehave no other means?

I do not worry about scholars reading this book. Infact they should read it. They will easily discover those parts that areuseful---and there are many---and discard the rest. But what about youngstudents? What of those who do not know Emily and pick this book as theirfirst meeting with her?

Instead, may I suggest they read "TheCapsule of the Mind" by Theodora Ward. It is also a psychological lookat Emily Dickinson. Ward is the granddaughter of Doctor and Mrs. JosiahGilbert Holland, two of Emily's closest friends. Ward was also an assistantto Thomas H. Johnson, Harvard University, the person most responsible forbringing us Emily's letters and poems. In fact, Ward herself was inspiredto become a Dickinson scholar when she discovered sixty-five of Emily'sletters in her family's attic.

Cynthia Wolff, please spare us yourpolitically correct---but factually incorrect---views on EmilyDickinson.

Joe Psarto 27843 Detroit Road # 412 Westlake, Ohio 44145(440-835-5179)>jpsarto@juno.com< ... Read more

Product Description

When something is most important to me and I do not want to lose it, I gather it into a poem. It is said that women must employ the needle and not the pen. But I will be a Poet! That's who I am!

Customer Reviews (6)

Loved the book.
Barbara Dana writes extremely well I was taken right into the life and times of a young Emily Dickinson. Anyone who is a fan of Dickinson's will want to add this to their collection of books to read and reread. This is not just for young people but adults too.

I'm forcing myself to finish it.
This book is dull.I'm tired of reading about Emily's sister's cats!The review by SLJ is much closer to my evaluation of this book, than are the previous customer reviews.I'm a fan of Emily Dickinson's poetry, none of which is included in the fictionalized "autobiiography."

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Despite a huge body of work and lifetime's worth of correspondence she left behind, Emily Dickinson remains an enigma in many people's minds. Why was she so preoccupied with death? Why did she choose to not marry in an era when most women did so to the exclusion of all other pursuits? What drove her to write more than one thousand poems, yet never seek publication for her work?

By immersing herself in Emily's poetry, prose, surroundings, and numerous biographies, Barbara Dana seeks to answer these questions in a first-person, fictional narrative of Emily's life from age eleven to twenty-four.

A VOICE OF HER OWN portrays Emily as a vivid, social, intelligent child; spending days and nights with family and friends, tramping about the idyllic town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Despite numerous bouts of illness, anxiety attacks, depressions, and the frequent loss of loved ones, Emily always retained a passion for the natural world, not to mention a fierce drive to improve both academically and as a poet.

It took a long time to read this novel, not because I didn't enjoy it; quite the opposite in fact, because A VOICE OF HER OWN became my daily treat of Godiva chocolates. Whenever I wanted a quiet moment to savor the beauty of nature, or revel in contemplation of a slower-paced way of life, I'd pull out Barbara Dana's book and dip into the possibilities surrounding Emily Dickinson's formative years.

Ms. Dana did a superb job of capturing Emily's voice and spirit, making this novel a truly joyful read and definitely one for the keeper shelf.

Reviewed by:Cat

Are you sure Emily Dickinson didn't write this?
I cannot imagine how much research and love went into writing this book.While reading it, I laughed aloud, teared up, and folded down page corners on a regular basis.Barbara Dana captures Emily's voice with such precision, you feel as though you've discovered a long lost diary.Emily's observations of life, self, nature, and expression are just as relevant now as in the time of her childhood.This book is sure to move, inform, and inspire you no matter what your age!Don't be misled by the young adult category!I cannot praise it enough!

Emily...way ahead of her time!
I really enjoyed reading about Emily Dickenson and was happily surprised to hear she was way ahead of her time.Despite having a mental illness, which was kind of glossed over, she was a strong woman.I have always enjoyed her poetry and became fascinated with her once a teacher of mine told me that my poems were similar to Emily Dickenson's!After that point, I have tried to read everything I can on her.This book is not only entertaining, but offers a lot of insight on Emily's family, friends, pets, schools and poems.I really enjoyed this book! ... Read more

Product Description
". . . original and provocative . . . Martha Nell Smith convincingly answers those who continue to ask why Dickinson did not publish more while she was alive. The author also offers a revisionist interpretation of the relationship between the poet and her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, whose role in both the poetic process and subsequent publication of Dickinson's work she contends is much more significant than critics to date believe."--Belles Lettres ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Outing Emily
This book is part of the new movement to out nineteenth-century figures such as Emily Dickinson and Abraham Lincoln, due to a profound misunderstanding of nineteenth-century culture and the sexual mores of that time.

There was no stigma attached to deep interpersonal relationships between friends of the same sex at that time in history, and to attach sexual undertones or overtones to these relationships is to attach a lurid agenda to innocent relationships.

Low self-image has driven this coterie of authors to attempt to justify their own perceived self-loathing by outing innocent public figures such as Dickinson and Lincoln.


Who is next, we wonder? Jesus? He did hang out with a bunch of guys after all.

Outing Emily
This book is part of the new movement to out nineteenth-century figures such as Emily Dickinson and Abraham Lincoln, due to a profound misunderstanding of nineteenth-century culture and the sexual mores of that time.

There was no stigma attached to deep interpersonal relationships between friends of the same sex at that time in history, and to attach sexual undertones or overtones to these relationships is to attach a lurid agenda to innocent relationships.

Low self-image has driven this coterie of authors to attempt to justify their own perceived self-loathing by outing innocent public figures such as Dickinson and Lincoln.


Who is next, we wonder? Jesus? He did hang out with a bunch of guys after all.

Fascinating.
At times a bit cumbersome, but overall this is a nice introduction into re-reading Emily Dickinson.

The intended audience, no doubt, is a reader well-versed in Emily Dickinson who is willing to explore the poet with no preconceived notions. In a sense, therefore, it may be most enjoyed by those who have just begun their investigation and study of Dickinson.

The author has gone back to the original "manuscripts" of the poems and letters written by Emily, and noted how they have been edited, censored, and manipulated by those entrusted to publish Emily's writings after her death. The author makes a convincing case that Emily's relationship with her brother's wife, Sue, was much more profound than others have suggested; and, that the "editors" of Emily's poems worked hard to suppress evidence of this relationship.

Ms Smith did not want this study to be another biography but it would have been helpful to learn a bit more of some of the individuals she mentions. Specifically, I have in mind, Kate Anthon, whom Ms Smith states received passionate letters from Emily. I do not recall seeing the name Kate Anthon in Cynthia Griffin Wolff's biography of Emily, and she is not listed in the index of Wolff's biography.

Without question, this book needs to be read as an academic study, and will take several re-readings to get the full impact.

This appears to be Ms Smith's first full-length book regarding Emily and the beginning of her own use of technology in studying the humanities. Ms Smith is a founding director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. She is now a recognized Dickinson scholar with several books on Emily Dickinson published and more in progress.

I am very new to Emily Dickinson but it appears that reading Martha Nell Smith is imperative for those with more than a passing interest in the poet. My gut feeling is that Harold Bloom would not be happy with Ms Smith's hypotheses but I may be wrong. I would think he would be pleased with the scholarship.

For more, go to Martha Nell Smith's website.
... Read more

Product Description

In this first substantial study of Emily Dickinson's devotion to flowers and gardening, Judith Farr seeks to join both poet and gardener in one creative personality. She casts new light on Dickinson's temperament, her aesthetic sensibility, and her vision of the relationship between art and nature, revealing that the successful gardener's intimate understanding of horticulture helped shape the poet's choice of metaphors for every experience: love and hate, wickedness and virtue, death and immortality.

Gardening, Farr demonstrates, was Dickinson's other vocation, more public than the making of poems but analogous and closely related to it. Over a third of Dickinson's poems and nearly half of her letters allude with passionate intensity to her favorite wildflowers, to traditional blooms like the daisy or gentian, and to the exotic gardenias and jasmines of her conservatory. Each flower was assigned specific connotations by the nineteenth century floral dictionaries she knew; thus, Dickinson's association of various flowers with friends, family, and lovers, like the tropes and scenarios presented in her poems, establishes her participation in the literary and painterly culture of her day. A chapter, "Gardening with Emily Dickinson" by Louise Carter, cites family letters and memoirs to conjecture the kinds of flowers contained in the poet's indoor and outdoor gardens. Carter hypothesizes Dickinson's methods of gardening, explaining how one might grow her flowers today.

Beautifully illustrated and written with verve, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson will provide pleasure and insight to a wide audience of scholars, admirers of Dickinson's poetry, and garden lovers everywhere.

Customer Reviews (3)

Award Winning Prose
This scholarly, beautiful and original book by Judith Farr, with Louise Carter, also won the 2005 Rosemary Crawshay prize, awarded by the British Academy, United Kingdom, "to a woman of any nationality who, in the judgement of the Council of the British Academy, has written or published within three years next preceding the year of the award an historical or critical work of sufficient value on any subject connected with English Literature, preference being given to a work regarding one of the poets Byron, Shelley and Keats".

"Beauty crowds me till I die"
Emily Dickinson continues to fascinate the literary world, not only because of her unique, eerily beautiful poetry, but also because of the delicious mystery that cocoons her life well over one hundred years after her death.Some have painted her as a looney eccentric, some as a recluse shrouded in sexual ecstasy: she has been seen on theatre stages throughout the world as the Belle of Amherst, and her works have been incorporated into songs and symphonies - the most poignant being John Adams' "Harmonium".

Yet few investigators have the quaint, informed pique as the highly admired Dickinson scholar, Judith Farr.This book THE GARDENS OF EMILY DICKINSON maintains the level of biographic study that began with her THE PASSION OF EMILY DICKINSON in 1994 and continued with the elegant, aptly eccentric epistolary novel I NEVER CAME TO YOU IN WHITE in 1996. Like the previous books, Farr does not confine her writing to academia (though she obviously has consumed every bit of available information on her subject and footnoted these books extensively): Farr prefers to open doors and windows of imagination to make the factual data supplied have a semblance to the radiance of Dickinson's gifts to posterity.

During Emily Dickinson's lifetime (1830 - 1886) the poet was better know for her commitment to the oh-so-proper Victorian art of gardening. Books on Botany from that period held dominion over reading tables and bookshelves and Dickinson was as astute a garden scholar as the best of them. Flowers are frequently referenced in her poetry, her letters, her life, and Farr has used this other half of Dickinson's life as a means to explore the meanings of her poems.'Flowers - Well - if anybody/Can extasy define -/Half a transport - half a trouble -/With which flowers humble men:...'She divides her writings into chapters 'Gardening in Eden' (the more spiritual aspect of the garden), 'The Woodland Garden' (the exploration of her natural garden on the grounds of the Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts), 'The Enclosed Garden' (the conservatory where exotic looms were coddled), and 'The Garden in the Brain'.In each of these chapters Farr takes almost every reference to flowers in Dickinson's poems and discusses their significance both herbally and philosophically and passionately.The characters that played significant roles in Dickinson's odd life are all addressed (Susan Dickinson, Bowles, Higginson, etc) by referencing letters to and poems about each , and each bit of evidence breathes floral dimensions.Almost as an intermission to this theatrical diversion, Farr has placed a chapter by Louise Carter "Gardening with Emily Dickinson" which is well written and serves to ground the ongoing growing tales of the Belle of Amherst with a sophisticated diversion on the techniques of the Victorian Gardener - a chapter which could easily find its way into all Garden books!And aptly, in a manner that would no doubt find Dickinson's approval, Farr ends her book with an Epilogue, which indeed places all of her information in perspective and is enlightening to both the scholar and the occasional reader of the Poetry of Emily Dickinson.Judith Farr is a solid scholar, a fine writer, and if at times she cannot resist the tendency to 'personalize' her data, then that is merely her style and for this reader is only additive.The preface page of her book quotes the words of Thomas Wentworth Higginson: "There is no conceivable/beauty of blossom/so beautiful as words -/none so graceful,/none so perfumed."This lovely thought is a fitting introduction to the writing of Judith Farr, too. I wonder which aspect of Emily Dickinson she will explore next....

Another Tour de Force from Judith Farr
Judith Farr is the preeminent Emily Dickson scholar alive today.This is a worthy companion to The Passion of Emily Dickson, also published by Harvard Press.If you are unfamiliar with Farr's work and love Emily Dickinson, you owe it to yourself to read both works.Farr's insights are bold, well-defended and entirely convincing.Her writing is crisp, direct and immensely readable. Also, this is without a doubt one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen in presentation.The color plates are worth the price of the book alone.Better than 5 stars. ... Read more

Product Description
Initially a vivacious, outgoing person, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) progressively withdrew into a reclusive existence. An undiscovered genius during her lifetime, only seven out of her total of 1,775 poems were published prior to her death. She had an immense breadth of vision and a passionate intensity and awe for life, love, nature, time and eternity. Originally branded an eccentric, Emily Dickinson is now recognised as a major poet of great depth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good read
I think she didn't leave the house because she didn't want to. ... Read more

Product Description
Garnishing awards from "Choice," "Christianity Today," "Books & Culture," and the Conference on Christianity and Literature when first published in 1998, Roger Lundin's "Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief" has been widely recognized as one of the finest biographies of the great American poet Emily Dickinson. Paying special attention to her experience of faith, Lundin skillfully relates Dickinson's life — as it can be charted through her poems and letters — to nineteenth-century American political, social, religious, and intellectual history.

This second edition of Lundin's superb work includes a standard bibliography, expanded notes, and a more extensive discussion of Dickinson's poetry than the first edition contained. Besides examining Dickinson's singular life and work in greater depth, Lundin has also keyed all poem citations to the recently updated standard edition of Dickinson's poetry. Already outstanding, Lundin's biography of Emily Dickinson is now even better than before. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Emily Dickinso9n nd the Art of Belief
This is an oustanding biography of Emily Dickson drawn almost completely from the revelations found in her letters. It is the best biography of this enigmatic writer that I have ever seen. For scolas of American literature this is a MUST HAVE for your libraries.

Expands the Emily enigma more than it explains...
I have been obsessed with the life of Dickinson for more than 20 years, and I had high hopes that this author would fill in some gaps that the other 15 or 20 E.D. books had not. In that wish, I was unfulfilled, although the author gives it a great try. I did learn more than I knew before about the "general" protestant currents in Emily's New England between 1830-1880, but the Queen Recluse emerges from Lundlin's examination of her apparent beefs with, and beliefs about, Christianity as still "a puzzlement." For other E.D. compulsives, I think this is a must-own, but for casual poetry fans, it probably is not an essential addition to their shelf. For any serious Emily explorer, Richard Sewell's massive 1974 "Life of Emily Dickinson" remains the Mount Everest that must be scaled, and the most satisfying look at her life, poetry and prose.

Unwrapping a Bit of the Enigma
This book is a rarity: a work of biography and literary criticism that isn't a chore to plow through. Roger Lundin's style, unlike that of most academics who pursue the great classics of literature, is lucid and uncomplicated. There isn't, as I recall, a tortured sentence in the entire book.

Besides this not-to-be-discounted virtue, there are other important ones as well. Since the book is guided by Lundin's thesis, which has to do with issues of faith as they are expressed in Dickinson's work, the focus is tight, producing a similarly focused narrative. No time is wasted on speculations about Dickinson's sex life, for example, though the readily verifiable is certainly reviewed in the pages of the book. About Dickinson's relationship with the man she came close to marrying, Otis P. Lord, we'd probably like to hear more. But again, the record is incomplete because much of the correspondence between the principals was destroyed, and Lundin doesn't overstep, sticking to what can be proved.

This is not strictly a critical biography, so those poems tjat Lundin examines are considered only briefly--just closely enough to explain their relationship to his thesis. Lundin chooses judiciously, as he does among the letters and personal accounts centering on Dickinson. Besides, he relates Dickinson's thinking on matters of faith to spiritual and intellectual trends in 19th-century America, and this is among the most important features of the work, especially since he cites a number of noted authorities on the place of religion in American history. If you have any interest in such issues, Lundin's citations will probably send you on a further quest.

Only rarely did I say to myself, "I'd like to hear more about that topic." Lundin develops his thesis with skill and with great sympathy for his subject. He certainly doesn't explain the enigma that is Emily Dickinson, but he moves us closer to an understanding of this frustratingly, fascinatingly complex artist.

A penetrating look at Emily Dickinson's spiritual formation
As a lay person, knowing more of Roger Lundin's academic reputation than of Emily Dickinson's life and work, I was intimidated by the prospect of reading his biography of the poet, "Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief." However, as the foreword assures us, this book is not meant for the "cognoscenti" alone, but for us "uninitiated outsiders" as well. And as the departing shore of the book's introduction became faint, I found only the calm seas and smooth sailing of a real page turner.I was soon fascinated by Dickinson's enigmatic life as Lundin carefully unfolded the practical details of her life in nineteenth century Amherst, as well as her development as a poet, an intellectual, and a religious thinker in an era on the edge of modernity.One of the most poignant themes in the book was Dickinson's progressive reclusiveness--and for all the reasons Lundin gives for it, I wasn't completely satisfied until the very last chapter. A surprising dimension of the book is the discussion of Emily's political, cultural, and religious milieu--which we eventually come to learn is key to understanding Dickinson's discomfiting questions and world view.The only fault I find in the book is not at Lundin's hand, but Emily herself. Though she leaves us in awe of her literary genius and spiritual sensitivity, her seemingly selfish reclusiveness and her failure to ever clearly declare the state of her soul left me feeling sorry for her.Although I have been taught never to judge in these matters, as a Christian I can't help but wonder, "was she or wasn't she?" Did she ever make the leap of faith?Lundin never gives us a definitive "yes" or "no," but yet gives enough data that we can make our own educated determination. I only hope that when I have "forded the mystery" and turn the corner of Heaven, I will find Emily at the feet of Jesus, having set aside her pondering pen, happy and content to finally be a bride. "Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief" gives me that much hope ... Read more

Product Description
Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive.One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified.In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson’s growth–a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.

Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson’s own letters.Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson’s story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father’s political isolation after the Whig Party’s collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice.

The definitive treatment of Dickinson’s life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator.Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.


From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
In an excellent literary biography that matches the standard set by his earlier book, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr., Alfred Habegger brings a modern perspective to bear on the life and art of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86) while respecting and lucidly conveying her own distinctively 19th-century views. Like the groundbreaking 1970s feminist reassessments of Dickinson, this text avoids portraying her as a quaint, ladylike homebody (the stereotypical "Belle of Amherst"), and instead stresses her powerful personality and the strategies she employed to transcend the limits placed on her by Victorian society and a domineering father. Even though as an unmarried woman she was expected to stay close to home, Dickinson opted for a life of seclusion, thereby avoiding the socialresponsibilities foisted upon middle-class women of her day. Habegger does not minimize the fact that Dickinson was a very peculiar woman, particularly as he chronicles the middle years during which her unconventional attitudes hardened into the mannerisms of a local "character." But his primary focus is always on the genius that transformed her personal dilemmas into art.His sensitive, acute handling of her writings, with frequent quotations and careful analysis, fulfills one of the key functions of a literary biography: it makes you want to run out and reread Emily Dickinson's poetry right away. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Provides insight into the poet's life, and tries to do so with her poems
Having read discouraging reviews about two recent books about
Dickinson, and having heard that this was highly recommended, I
decided that (as a busy person) I would just sample it, but I ended up
reading all 620 pages straight through.Habegger does an impressive
job weighing evidence and avoiding the speculations of earlier
biographers and critics. Yet in the end, Dickinson proves elusive. I
feel I know a lot more about her life, but I realize Habegger had to
do some speculation of his own. I recommend his book highly. But after
all the research and analysis, we are left with just the poems and
letters themselves, possessing no magic key the unlock their
significance or why they mean so much to so many people.

Superb Dickinson biography
Habegger's bio of Emily Dickinson is thorough, well-written, fully researched.Chronologically arranged, but it does a good job of tying together various periods of ED's life and thought. Gives a real feeling for the people in her life. May not agree with all of Habegger's comments,but they are generally reasonable, not outlandish or strained. Reads easily - almost a page-turner. Excellent book.

Mostly for the Dickinson Scholar
Habegger's painstaking biography was greeted with awards and high praise, but for the casual reader who simply wants to learn a bit more about the reclusive Emily Dickinson, it's heavy going indeed.

Most of the first half of the 629 pages of text (and I'm not counting the bibliography, references, or genealogical charts!) deals not with Dickinson, but with the social standing and financial affairs of her grandparents and parents, with the political climate of the day, and with other background material that could have well been mentioned only in passing.

Granted, Habegger's task was enormous.Dickinson published only 10 poems in her lifetime, most appearing anonymously and some even against her express desires.She left instructions with her surviving sister to destroy all her writings, both correspondence and poems, and it is by the narrowest chance that the instructions were not followed completely.The biographer is left with the faintest of trails, and points out that some earlier works on the poet's life have been tainted by poor scholarship or lack of impartiality.

Still, the casual reader can only wish Habegger had edited himself more severely, and included more of Dickinson's works.His references to her poems often include just one or two lines, which tasks the reader to chase down the complete works in order to fully understand what is being implied.

The subject of Dickinson's sexuality cannot help but intrude.Habegger handles this with great delicacy and as much honesty as the extant material allows.Dickinson's supposed lesbianism is roundly smacked down, yet in the same breath, he quotes notes Dickinson wrote to her sister-in-law or other women friends using language that the modern reader has no choice but to interpret as erotic.It is difficult for the modern reader to accept that the endearments and references to kisses and embraces don't have a sexual undertone.

The entirety of the work is invaluable to the literary historian, but it's certainly not beach reading.

A good and well-written biography
I found Habegger's writing excellent, succinct and, many times, amusing. Having taught a course on Dickson's for many years (described in the Forward), he has an uncanny grasp of the minor characters no one remembers, and it is brought home that these characters are only being examined because they had some link to a strange and increasingly withdrawn poet. The author was able to show the point of view that is missing, Dicken's, which radiated from her obsessive way of relating to others. Her family history is especially interesting, showing an authoritarian and anti-feminist father, the type woman (a drone) her mother was, and the resulting progency, the three children. Enough is included to draw one's own conclusions about the poetess, who may have been caged, but accepted the bars in that cage because put there by her father. In some ways, Emily (to my mind) failed to deliver herself.

Academically Valid Without Being Dull
I began this book with trepidation, for I find myself slightly suspicious of literary biographies finding them to be either too sensationalized or reductive or too academic to be interesting to the average reader. This is a well-researched volume that does not read like a doctoral thesis. But Alfred Habegger manages to discover a delightful balance between scholarly research and public readability.
I adore Dickinson and was impressed with the manner in which Habegger handled his subject. He presents her with the complexity and intellectual approach toward she deserves. Emily Dickinson appears as neither the bizarre recluse nor a misunderstood sexual being of some of her previous biographies. If, as some readers have found, the poet appears a bit unresolved and incomplete, it is only because Mr. Habegger wisely chose NOT to sensationalize his book with unsubstantiated presumptions as to her personal life. I enjoyed the author's scholarly, non-sensationalist approach to Ms. Dickinson and found that it did not prevent me from "knowing her" as a person or subject.
One of Alfred Hebeggar's greatest strengths is his realization that no artist exists in a vacuum. He presents to his readers the complex outer world that inspired the poets rich inner world allowing us to draw many of our own conclusions. Meticulously researched and gently paced, the book is a journey not merely a chronicle of a single life. Instead, it is an insightful look at the entire Dickinsonian world of family, academics, and petty town politics. Habegger introduces the reader to the poet's entire extended family and the emotional movement within it. He allows the reader to truly see the social and political environment in which the poet lived. And that is fascinating in its own right.
Overall, I enjoyed the book very much and appreciate Alfred Hebeggar's unique ability to strike a balance scholarship and authorship. He is never condescending, yet he explains thoroughly. He treats the reader as an intelligent person with a mind eager for historical details and biographical accuracy and he treats his subject with respect and intellectual dignity. His book is academically valid without sacrificing the art of solid writing.
... Read more

Product Description

From the introduction by Joyce Carol Oates:

Customer Reviews (2)

Lovely Verse, Passionately Performed
I'm not, generally speaking, a poetry kind of guy, but this is by a poetess personality with whom I am in sympathy. Her self-imposed, mostly secluded adult existance away from humankind has always made me wonder and appreciate her. I once worked with an old and very experienced female newspaper reporter who once said to me in disgust: "You know, people are just no damned good." I also remember a quote from somewhere, by Charles Bukowski I think, that said: "I like people, but I seem to feel better when they're not around." There seems to be a peace and stillness not to be found elsewhere in living mostly apart from others and not participating in their frantic money gathering, incessant and/or nonsensical babbling, their grand propensity for violence in it's many forms, self-idolizations and their hippocracies. She died for beauty, but from her writing I perceive she found much in nature, but didn't find so much in humankind. Just a sprinkling here and there, and maybe that's enough. Her comments about religion and church-going make me smile. She seems to have been an insightful genius. The recording is just fine.

A little light/ a slant concealed/ Emily D's/ soul revealed
Emily Dickison is one of the world's most memorable poets. This selection of her writing introduces us into her epigrammatic visionary verse-. There could not be a more appropriate person to introduce Emily, than another haunted inhabit of the deep literary imagination- Joyce Carol Oates.
Dickinson's verse stings and remains seared in the mind . It touches earth and tries Heaven in oblique inferences which shatter us out of our mental slumber.In subtle perceptions of metaphor it addresses the fundamental longings and distinctions of the human soul. It defines and redefines our feeling , in contracted language which expands the meaning we give to our own everyday lines.

"Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea
Past the headlands, past the houses into deep eternity" ... Read more

Product Description
Emily Dickinson lived as a recluse in Amherst, Massachusetts, dedicating herself to writing a "letter to the world"--the 1,775 poems left unpublished at her death in 1886. Today, Dickinson stands in the front rank of American poets. This enthralling collection includes more than four hundred poems that were published between Dickinson's death and 1900. They express her concepts of life and death, of love and nature, and of what Henry James called "the landscape of the soul." And as Billy Collins suggests in his Introduction, "In the age of the workshop, the reading, the poetry conference and festival, Dickinson reminds us of the deeply private nature of literary art."Amazon.com Review
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish has notedthe "curious energy" which pervades Emily Dickinson's work. She, alongwith Walt Whitman, helps make up the very foundation of Americanpoetry. This Modern Library edition from Random House is an excellentoverview of Dickinson's work, divided by theme, including "Life,""Nature," "Love," and so forth. This volume of selected poems is amust for any serious reader of American poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

DO NOT GET THIS EDITION
NOTE: This is not a 1-star review for Emily Dickinson. She is one of the greatest poets of all time, and should be read by everyone who loves poetry (and even those who don't).

That said, this is a terrible edition. I was shocked when I opened it in a bookstore, looking to show a friend one of her poems I had just been talking about, to discover that the punctuation had been completely modified. The meanings of some of her best poems hinge on varying interpretations of Dickinson's eccentric punctuation, and to change it seems to me one of the great crimes against poetry. I am especially disappointed because Modern Library normally puts out such excellent editions, but this one is just awful.

Sanitized Emily
Emily Dickinson is a genius and great poet, but this isn't the way to experience her work. Dickinson's distinctive punctuation and capitalization are "corrected"; the effect is maybe a smoother read but one far less rich in implications and possibilities. The division of the poems employed here , and in many of the older collections ("Life," "Nature," "Love," "Time and Eternity") are not Dickinson's, and are not very useful in experiencing the poems. In my opinion, this volume omits many of Emily's best poems and includes some of her least interesting/ daring. Of course, there can be many varying opinions as to what Emily's best work was, but since all of her poems are collected in one manageable volume there's no need to let someone else decide that for you. As another reviewer has said, the Johnson "Complete Poems" volume is what you want.

This isn't quite the letter Emily was writing to the world...
I picked up this selection of Dickinson's poems on a whim because I am a huge fan of her poetry--it simply reaches to your very soul and leaves you rapt in awe.However--I must say--that I am sorely disappointed with this edition of selected poems.As one of the other reviewers has stated, this edition has been greatly tampered with--the editors have reworked the punctuation and capitalization stylistic genius of Dickinson and bastardized it to accommodate the modern reader--but, honestly, to do this severely detracts from Dickinson's so very unique voice.Particularly, the editors employed the comma as a replacement for her frivolous usage of the dash, which left me squirming in distaste--it nearly ruins the poems in my opinion.To "fix" a poem--punctuation or otherwise--is to change the very essence behind it--I was very surprised the editors would take such strange liberties in modifying these poems.If you're a stickler about poetry, this is not the edition for you.But if you wish to simply read these poems for the sake of reading them, then you may be ok with this edition--but I still would recommend against it; you don't quite get the same sense of Dickinson's subtle and profound examinations of the world.

You gotta buy this book.
This book is awesome! Everyone should buy it.

This is not really the edition you want.
I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this.But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote.You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, thebadly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food.Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food?Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended.So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems.These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson.Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, alongwith reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader.Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition.Edited byR. W. Franklin.692 pp.Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON.Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued.ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selectionof what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems.Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages.New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition.Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing? ... Read more

Product Description

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This book features the table of contents linked to every poem and chapter. The book was designed for optimal navigation on the Kindle, PDA, Smartphone, and other electronic readers. It is formatted to display on all electronic devices including the Kindle, Smartphones and other Mobile Devices with a small display.

Customer Reviews (6)

A Must to Have if you Like Her Poems
The index works perfectly.I love this book.It's so much more convenient than having a printed book.You won't regret getting this version. I looked at all the others and this is the best one.

Beautiful Emily Dickinson poems are well organized and easily accessible from links in the table of contents.
Beautiful Emily Dickinson poems are well organized and easily accessible from links in the table of contents.

Comments from the Publisher
We apologize for the inconvenience. The book was corrected on June 2nd, 2009. The new version has first line index.

MobileReference

Blasphemy
This book should not even be in public distribution.It normalizes Dickinson's dashes, use of capitals, etc -- (AND is hard to navigate, as pointed out by another reviewer). The entire POINT of ED's poetry is the idiosyncrasy of it, and this edition essentially defaces her work.

This superb updated version is vastly improved compared to its predecessor
I fess up that I initially gave this Emily Dickinson anthology a critical review (2 stars) on May 18. Since then, MobleReference has conscientiously responded to its readers' criticisms and significantly upgraded the quality of this ebook. Most importantly, the Table of Contents is now fully interactive and linkable to the contents of the book; the formatting of the poems has been improved upon as well. The publishers also added an "Index of First Lines" -- of course, it would be ideal to have a "List of Titles" as well, per the standard practice of "paper" poetry books. But for 99 cents it's hard to nitpick, although as several critical reviews point out, the punctuation (e.g., dashes) and capitalizations here are not faithful to Emily Dickinson's original, deliberately idiosyncratic conventions.

One of the things that make this and most "mobi editions" so valuable is the wealth of biographical and critical literary essays that supplement the complete poems. Although I think the absence of a searchable list of poem titles remains a drawback for folks like me who aren't already thoroughly familiar with Dickinson's oeuvre, this newest avatar of "Poems: Three Complete Series by Emily Dickinson" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EMHOBQ/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk (updated June 2, 2009) makes for an outstanding addition to the fertile partnership of MobileReference and Kindle Books. ... Read more

Product Description
Emily Dickinson's fascicles, the forty booklets comprising more than 800 of her poems that she gathered and bound together with string, had long been cast into disarray until R. W. Franklin restored them to their original state, then made them available to readers in his 1981 Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. Many Dickinson readers believe their ordering to be random, while others have proposed that one or more of the fascicles appear to center upon some organizing principle.In this important critical study,Dorothy Huff Oberhaus demonstrates for the first time the structural principles underlying Emily Dickinson's assembling of the fascicles. Oberhaus argues that Dickinson's fortieth fascicle is a three-part meditation and the triumphant conclusion of a long lyric cycle, the account of a spiritual and poetic pilgrimage that begins with the first fascicle's first poem. The author in turn finds that the other thirty-eight fascicles are meditative gatherings of interwoven poems centering upon common themes.Discovering the structural principles underlying Dickinson's arrangement of the fascicles presents a very different poet from the one portrayed by previous critics.This careful reading of the fascicles reveals that Dickinson was capable of arranging a long, sustained major work with the most subtle and complex organization. Oberhaus also finds Dickinson to be a Christian poet for whom the Bible was not merely a source of imagery, as has long been thought; rather, the Bible is essential to Dickinson's structure and meaning and therefore an essential source for understanding her poems.Discovering the structural principles underlying Dickinson's arrangement of the fascicles presents a very different poet from the one portrayed by previous critics. This careful reading of the fascicles reveals that Dickinson was capable of arranging a long, sustained major work with the most subtle and complex organization. Oberhaus also finds Dickinson to be a Christian poet for whom ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding!
A thrilling look at the mind behind the poems. The author makes the poetry of Emily Dickinson more accessible to the average reader with her insights to the life and time of this enchanting woman. A must read for any lover of poetry! ... Read more

Product Description
Letters. For the first time, selections from EmilyDickinson's thirty-six year correspondence to her neighbor andsister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, are compiled in a singlevolume. OPEN ME CAREFULLY invites dramatic new understanding of EmilyDickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship andmisinterpretation. "As this correspondence shows ... Emily and Susan'srelationship surpasses in depth, passion, and continuity thestereotype of the 'intimate exchange' between women friends of theperiod. The ardor of Dickinson's late teens and early twenties maturedand deepened over the decades, and the romantic and erotic expressionsfrom Emily to Susan continued until Dickinson's death in May 1886"(from the Introduction) Includes a selected bibliography and index.Amazon.com Review
Emily Dickinson is a figure of intense contradictions: thehermit, the spinster, the frail woman in white who nonetheless wrotepoems of almost painfully turbulent passion. For years, biographershave speculated about the male mentor who inspired Dickinson's work,naming intellectual figures like Thomas Wentworth Higginson and SamuelBowles as possible candidates. As it turns out, however, they mighthave looked closer to home. For years, both before and after a painfulbreak in their relationship, Dickinson wrote ardent letters to herfriend (and eventual sister-in-law) Susan Huntington Dickinson. Infact, she wrote more letters to Susan than to anyone else, despite thefact that at one point Susan lived only a stone's throw away. LikeDickinson's poetry, these letters are a curious business: halfepistles, half poems, idiosyncratically capitalized, punctuated, andspaced. They are not merely warm, in the 19th-century way; theyare fierce, even erotic, in the kind of attachment they express. Yeteditors Ellen Hart and Martha Smith aren't in the business of outinganyone; they prefer to simply present the correspondence in all itspassionate oddity. Susan Dickinson was clearly a friend as well as oneof the most valued readers of her sister-in-law's poetry--but was sheits inspiration, as well? Hart and Smith let the reader decide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Mercy!<and that's a good thing>
My only disappointment with this book lies with myself for not having the frame of reference inre the Bible, the classics and the news & literature of the day, to give the writing presented here the depth and flavor so tantalizingly near.Though some things transcend meanings, of course, I felt a lack of reference too in the language private and shared only between correspondents.There is, through no fault of the editors, a very noticeable mostly silence where one woman's voice surely rang, whispered, shouted, strode in over four decades of on-going intelligent and warm, in the warmest sense, and yet often distant interaction.It left me, the book, feeling like I'd stumbled upon a treasure box of letters in a sunny attic aching for the second companion box to tell the rest of the story.

Open me not
Most of Emily Dickinson's letters have been public for a very long time and have been the center of a debate that started just after her death in 1886.The debate has been between two major factions: 1) Emily's sister-in-law, Sue Dickinson and her children, 2) Mabel Loomis Todd, Emily's brother Austin's mistress of 13 years (Emily's brother Austin, was Sue's husband) and Mabel's children (and the relatives of the above mentioned and their descendants!)

Mabel Loomis Todd was 26 years younger than Sue and was the mistress of Sue's husband and Emily's brother, Austin.There was no love lost between Mabel and Sue.Mabel's knowledge of Emily came mostly from Austin with whom she was intimate for 13 years, and from Emily's poems and letters.Austin was very close to his sister, Emily during all of his life.(He lived next door to her with his wife Sue.)Mabel never met Emily face to face but by then Emily saw no one except old, trusted friends and was considered a recluse in Amherst.

"Open Me Carefully" comes down on the Sue side of the debate and discounts Mabel and Austin's point of view.(The authors refer to Austin and Mabel's affair only once, in passing, in the Introduction: "[Sue was] distracted by the loss [death] of Emily and by her husband's flagrant (my emphasis) affair with Mabel Loomis Todd...")But there is very little discussion of the different scholarly views and opinions of Emily's emotional life and even though there is an impressive number of footnotes at the end of the book, there is little evidence of scholarship in the book itself except for smoke that seems to rise from scholarly fires burning elsewhere.

The authors' introductory text strongly implies that Emily's feelings for Sue were sexual, even though the authors don't state this explicitly and never use the word 'lesbian.' For example on the first page of Section I, we are told "The letters from Emily to Susan and drafts of letters from Susan indicate that Susan is the object of passionate attachment for both brother and sister."On the second page of Section II we read: "These 'Dollie' (Sue's nickname) poems are deeply romantic and erotic..."In the Introduction we are told "The ardor of Dickinson's late teens and early twenties matured and deepened over the decades and the romantic and erotic expression from Emily to Susan continued until Dickinson's death in May 1886."In addition, the title of the book and the picture on its cover imply that Sue and Emily were related erotically or, dare I say, sexually?

The burden of "Open Me Carefully" should be to demonstrate that Emily and Sue had a life-long 'lesbian muse' relationship not simply to tell us they had one.Also, this book should not include any letters or poems that cannot be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" to have been sent to Sue or intended for her.If consensus cannot be arrived at within the community of Dickinson scholars this fact should be clearly stated.

I should add that I think it is certainly possible that the theses of the book are true.I just don't believe that they have been proved or even demonstrated to be probably true.

Emily's letters and poems rate five stars but this arrangement of them isn't convincing and the extent of Sue's influence on Emily remains uncertain.

Not a big Dickinson fan, but...
I still loved this book, and I think that reading her personal letters gave me more insight into her as a fellow human being, which in turn allowed me to take a new look at her poetry. This is one of the few books of letters I've read where I found that the footnotes were just as interesting as the letters themselves. There is so much information contained in this book that one would think it would be almost burdonsome (or boring) to read, but it's not. I have to say I prefer Dickinson's prose to her poetry. Her letters flow beautifully and are full of spirit and light and wit. I guess the short of it is that reading this book of letters helped me to better connect to her humanity. Of course, I have a passion for books of letters because there is something delicious about feeling as though you are a voyeur looking in on the most private parts of someone else's life. Somehow you can get a far more intimate and interesting view from someone's letters to another than you ever could by simply reading a biography.

Even if you aren't a fan of Dickinson, give this book a chance. Beauty is always worth a read.

The Great Sue-Mabel Debate Continues
As most of you know, the Sue-Mabel controversy began virtually at ED's death (Vinnie gave Sue first shot at editing ED's poems, then turned the job over to Mabel when Sue couldn't come through) and continues to this day, one of the most fascinating things in literary history.Sue and Mabel, and their respective daughters, were in a bitter competition to publish the ED poems in their control and to preserve their "place" in ED's history.In 1966, Sewall's ground-breaking ED biography primarily relied on the Mabel side for information, so a negative picture of Sue was created.The recent Habegger biography relied on the Sue side, and a more humane picture of Sue came out.

"Open Me Carefully" comes down firmly on the Sue side of the great divide, arguing for a much greater role in ED's life and work than heretofore granted Sue (though I don't think the author's views are quite as revolutionary as the authors claim).A lot of axes are ground here, and frankly, I disagreed with many of their conclusions.I don't think they took sufficient account of Sewall's point that ED presented a different "face" to each of her correspondents (though, as in so much else, Habegger disagrees), nor evaluated in a balanced way the similar or even greater passion ED brought in her correspondence to Bowles, Higginson, Lord, and others. There really is very little evidence that Sue (herself a rather mediocre poet) had any significant impact on ED's stunning style and insight.

Nonetheless, I gave it five stars for its presentation and its excellent explication of an argument that, while I don't agree with it, should be evaluated by all interested ED students.

Her breast is fit for pearls
Any Emily Dickinson historian or student will want this book. It contains the lost puzzle pieces, released by Sue's family, to the mysterious Emily Dickinson. Sue wanted this story told at the right time. The sheer talent in these writings is amazing. Here was a girl who spent her days as a recluse doing laundry and dishes and writing letters and carrying them around in her pockets. The pen and paper, written word, was what connected the lone Emily to her outside world, her loves, her friends, and now to the rest of us. A must have for any writer who studies her. ... Read more

Product Description
Though principally known as the miniaturist in American poetry, Emily Dickinson produced a remarkably wide body of work - some concentrating on acute observations and some on bons mots. Full of wit and sensitivity, she generally appears in anthologies but this generous collection shows that she is a poet to be taken seriously. ... Read more

Product Description
How do we know that Emily Dickinson wrote poems? How do we recognize a poem when we see one? In Dickinson's Misery, Virginia Jackson poses fundamental questions about reading habits we have come to take for granted. Because Dickinson's writing remained largely unpublished when she died in 1886, decisions about what it was that Dickinson wrote have been left to the editors, publishers, and critics who have brought Dickinson's work into public view. The familiar letters, notes on advertising fliers, verses on split-open envelopes, and collections of verses on personal stationery tied together with string have become the Dickinson poems celebrated since her death as exemplary lyrics.

Jackson makes the larger argument that the century and a half spanning the circulation of Dickinson's work tells the story of a shift in the publication, consumption, and interpretation of lyric poetry. This shift took the form of what this book calls the "lyricization of poetry," a set of print and pedagogical practices that collapsed the variety of poetic genres into lyric as a synonym for poetry.

Featuring many new illustrations from Dickinson's manuscripts, this book makes a major contribution to the study of Dickinson and of nineteenth-century American poetry. It maps out the future for new work in historical poetics and lyric theory. ... Read more