Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Letters
  • Publication Date: July 21, 2023
  • ISBN: 9781554816347 / 1554816343
  • 128 pages; 7¾" x 9¼"

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Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Letters

  • Publication Date: July 21, 2023
  • ISBN: 9781554816347 / 1554816343
  • 128 pages; 7¾" x 9¼"

Banner reading Teaching the survey? Learn more about The Broadview Anthology of American Literature, with covers of the available volumes

This compact edition, designed for use in undergraduate courses, combines a substantial selection of Dickinson’s poems (including one complete fascicle) with a selection of letters and a range of contextual materials. In a number of cases several different versions of a poem are presented side by side.

The texts are based on the handwritten manuscripts themselves, in the facsimile form in which the Emily Dickinson Archive now makes the vast majority of Dickinson’s manuscript versions available to the general public. The three major editions that are based directly on the manuscripts—those of Thomas H. Johnson (1955), R.W. Franklin (1998) and Cristanne Miller (2016)—have also been consulted; in many cases where the transcriptions of these editors differ from one another, this edition provides information in the notes as to those differences. Extensive explanatory footnotes are also provided, as is a concise but wide-ranging introduction to Dickinson and her work.

The appendices include excerpts from numerous nineteenth-century reviews of Dickinson’s first published volume (including by William Dean Howells and Andrew Lang). Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s influential Atlantic Monthly article, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” is also included in its entirety.

This volume is one of a number of editions that have been drawn from the pages of the acclaimed Broadview Anthology of American Literature. The series is designed to make selections from the anthology available in a format convenient for use in a wide variety of contexts; each edition features an introduction and exaplanatory footnotes, and is designed to meet the needs of today’s students.

This edition departs from other editions in the series in one important respect—its format. The large page size of the edition facilitates the reproduction of manuscript pages in readable facsimile form, and the two-column format of the text facilitates comparison between different versions.

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Introduction

Selected Poems

  • [It’s all I have to bring today –]
  • [I never lost as much but twice –]
  • [I robbed the woods –]
    • [alternative version]
  • [Success is counted sweetest]
    • [alternative version]
  • [These are the days when Birds come back ˎ]
    • [alternative versions]
  • [Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –]
    • [alternative versions]
  • [Besides the Autumn poets sing]
  • [All overgrown by cunning moss,]
  • [I’m “wife” – I’ve finished that –]
  • [Title divine – is mine!]
  • [Faith is a fine invention]
    • [alternative version]
  • [Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –]
  • [The Lamp burns sure – within –]
  • [I came to buy a smile – today –]
  • [I’m Nobody! Who are you?]
    • [alternative version]
  • [Wild nights – Wild nights!]
    • [alternative versions]
  • [Over the fence –]
  • [I taste a liquor never brewed –]
    • [alternative version]
  • [There’s a certain Slant of light,]
    • [alternative versions]
  • [“Hope” is the thing with feathers –]
  • [Your Riches – taught me – Poverty.]
  • [I found the words to every thought]
  • [I like a look of Agony,]
  • [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,]
  • [It was not Death, for I stood up,]
  • [A Bird came down the Walk –]
  • [I know that He exists.]
  • [After great pain, a formal feeling comes –]
  • [This World is not conclusion.]
  • [I like to see it lap the Miles –]
    • [alternative version]
  • [The Soul selects her own Society –]
  • [One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted –]
  • [They shut me up in Prose –]
  • [This was a Poet –]
  • [I died for Beauty – but was scarce]
  • [The Malay – took the Pearl –]
  • [Because I could not stop for Death –]
    • [alternative version]
  • [Our journey had advanced –]
  • [I dwell in Possibility –]
  • [He fumbles at your Soul]
  • [It feels a shame to be Alive –]
  • [This is my letter to the World]
  • [I’m sorry for the Dead – Today –]
  • [I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –]
  • [The Brain – is wider than the Sky –]
  • [There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,]
  • [I measure every Grief I meet]
  • [Much Madness is divinest Sense –]
  • [I started Early – Took my Dog –]
  • [That I did always love]
  • [What Soft – Cherubic Creatures –]
  • [My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –]
  • [“Nature” is what We see –]
  • [I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to –]
  • [Publication – is the Auction]
  • [Truth – is as old as God –]
  • [I never saw a Moor –]
  • [Color – Caste – Denomination –]
  • [She rose to His Requirement – dropt]
  • [The Poets light but Lamps –]
  • [A Man may make a Remark –]
  • [Banish Air from Air –]
  • [As imperceptibly as Grief]
  • [The Heart has narrow Banks]
  • [Could I but ride indefinite]
  • [As the Starved Maelstrom laps the Navies]
  • [A narrow Fellow in the Grass]
    • [alternative versions]
  • [The Bustle in a House]
  • [A Spider sewed at Night]
  • [Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –]
    • [alternative version]
  • [To pile like Thunder to its close]
  • [Apparently with no surprise]
  • [A Word made Flesh is seldom]
  • [My life closed twice before its close;]
  • [To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,]
  • Fascicle 13
    • [I know some lonely Houses off the Road]
    • [I can wade Grief –]
    • [You see I cannot see – your lifetime –]
    • [“Hope” is the thing with feathers –]
    • [To die – takes just a little while –]
    • [If I’m lost – now –]
    • [Delight is as the flight –]
    • [She sweeps with many-colored Brooms –]
    • [Of Bronze – and Blaze –]
    • [There’s a certain Slant of light,]
    • [Blazing in Gold – and]
    • [Good Night! Which put the Candle out?]
    • [Read – Sweet – how others – strove –]
    • [Put up my lute!]
    • [There came a Day – at Summer’s full –]
    • [The lonesome for they know not What –]
    • [How the old Mountains drip with Sunset]
    • [Of Tribulation, these are They,]
    • [If your Nerve, deny you –]

Selected Letters

  • To Abiah Root (29 January 1850)
  • To Jane Humphrey (3 April 1850)
  • To Abiah Root (7 and 17 May 1850)
  • To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (April 1852)
  • To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (27 June 1852)
  • To Samuel Bowles (February 1861)
  • To Unknown Recipient (c. 1861)
  • To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (1861)
  • Susan Dickinson to Emily Dickinson (1861)
  • To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (1861)
  • To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (15 April 1862)
  • To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (25 April 1862)
  • To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (7 June 1862)
  • To Thomas Wentworth Higginson (July 1862)
  • To Otis Phillips Lord (c. 1878)
  • To Susan Gilbert Dickinson (October 1883)

In Context

  • The Reception of Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century
    • from Alexander Young, “Boston Letter,” Critic (11 October 1890)
    • from anonymous, “From the Book Store,” St. Joseph Daily News (22 November 1890)
    • from anonymous, “New Books,” Boston Post (27 November 1890)
    • from Kinsley Twining and William Hayes Ward, “Poems by Emily Dickinson,” Independent (11 December 1890)
    • from William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (January 1891)
    • from anonymous, Springfield Republican (23 January 1891)
    • from Andrew Lang, “A Literary Causerie,” Speaker (31 January 1891)
    • Laura Coombs Hills, Retouched image of Emily Dickinson (late nineteenth century)
  • Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” The Atlantic Monthly (October 1891)

Acknowledgments

Index

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