Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Papers of Emily Dickinson, Accession #7658, -a, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

7658 was deposited on August 20, 1964; 7658-a was deposited on April 4, 1990. Both were made gifts on July 1, 1991.

Biographical/Historical Information

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer; only seven of her some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself in secret into writing.

Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, and also served in Congress. She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-1847) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-1848). Around 1850 Dickinson started to write poems, first in fairly conventional style, but after ten years of practice she began to give room for experiments. From about 1858 she assembled many of her poems in packets of "fascicles," which she bound herself with needle and thread.

After the Civil War Dickinson restricted her contacts outside Amherst to exchange of letters, dressed only in white and saw few of the visitors who came to meet her. In fact, she spent most of her time in her room. Although she lived a secluded life, her letters reveal knowledge of the writings of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne. Dickinson's emotional life remains mysterious, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair. Two candidates have been presented: Reverend Charles Wadsworth, with whom she corresponded, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, to whom she addressed many poems.

After Dickinson's death in 1886, her sister Lavinia brought out her poems. She co-edited three volumes from 1891 to 1896. Despite its editorial imperfections, the first volume became popular. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the poet's niece, transcribed and published more poems, and in 1945 Bolts Of Melody essentially completed the task of bringing Dickinson's poems to the public. The publication of Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 edition of Emily Dickinson's poems finally gave readers a complete and accurate text.

Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern poetry. Her frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken meter, and unconventional metaphors have contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication.

Scope and Content

The Papers of Emily Dickinson consist primarily of correspondence by Emily Dickinson and Lavinia Dickinson. Of interest are descriptions of the death of Thomas Gilbert Dickinson in 1883. The Miscellaneous Documents series contains some 30 negative photostats of forgeries of Emily Dickinson poems; the forgeries were created by an unidentified young man who claimed he was part of the Dickinson family. With the photostats is a lengthy description by Joan St. C. Crane concerning the discovery of the forgeries. Also within Miscellaneous Documents is the galley proof for the 1951 edition of Emily Dickinson by Richard Chase and brief biographical sketches of Emily Dickinson, Lavinia Dickinson, and Forrest Fayette Emerson by a member of the Emerson family.

Arrangement

The Papers of Emily Dickinson are arranged in three series. Series I: Literary Manuscripts, consists of one autograph poem by Emily Dickinson; Series II: Correspondence is divided into two subseries: Subseries A: letters of Emily Dickinson and Subseries B: letters of Lavinia Dickinson. Both subseries are arranged chronologically. Finally is Series III: Miscellaneous Documents.