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The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson
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 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.
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 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.
- GenresPoetry
1490 pages, Hardcover
First published December 22, 1981
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67 people want to read
About the author
Emily Dickinson
1,564 books6,918 followersEmily Dickinson was an American poet who, despite the fact that less than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime, is widely considered one of the most original and influential poets of the 19th century.
Dickinson was born to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content.
A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/emily-di...
Dickinson was born to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content.
A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/emily-di...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 15, 2007
This huge, two-volume edition of Emily Dickinson's "fascicles" (her handmade booklets of handwritten poems) made Dickinson's manuscripts available to a general readership for the first time. It takes a while to get used to the writing, and so is best read alongside a print edition, but no text makes realer the physical labor and compositional imagination that shaped Dickinson's poetic practice. A book that changed the way this poet is now read, at least by scholars.
April 18, 2021
These books are absolutely necessary for any Dickinson scholar.
A professor of mine turned me on to these during my junior year of college, requesting that I do a comparative study of the published poems of Emily Dickinson and these handwritten poems. I was, otherwise, not permitted to submit any assignments pertaining to Dickinson’s poetry.
At the time, I was oblivious to the notion that every copy of Dickinson poetry I would pick up would hold within it an entirely different portrayal of every poem. The spacing, spelling, grammar, and even wording changes. I had never before seen editors take such liberties with an author’s works as to change them in this way, and so I went back to my Professor and asked which anthologies I should use for comparison. I was told, then, that Thomas H. Johnson’s collection was the closest, in print, to what Dickinson actually wrote, especially in terms to her use of dashes.
What I learned is that Johnson, who I was told bore the closest resemblance to Emily’s poems, still presented very different poems from what is written in these facsimiles.
One of the reasons for the differences is that Emily’s handwriting is very, very difficult to read. Her use of punctuation and dashes seem to vary and, in many instances, her poems are not concrete. Many lines of her poetry have a variety of wording options written on the page, as if she was mulling over using this word versus that or that or that word, and in some cases, alternate lines are written at the end of a line, possible additions or changes, all moving along within the poems. It is quite fascinating to see a poem that you are reading shift, change, slant as you read it. It is as if you are gleaming a tiny piece of the artistic process that went into the work itself.
I was so interested in my brief project that years later, I requested a copy of these for my library, which I still possess and cherish. It is not my go to book for Dickinson poems, despite the authenticity, due to its difficulty, but it is absolutely necessary for anyone that wants to read the words Dickinson has actually written.
I highly recommend this to any and all Dickinson scholars who are interested in learning more about the poet and her writing process.
A professor of mine turned me on to these during my junior year of college, requesting that I do a comparative study of the published poems of Emily Dickinson and these handwritten poems. I was, otherwise, not permitted to submit any assignments pertaining to Dickinson’s poetry.
At the time, I was oblivious to the notion that every copy of Dickinson poetry I would pick up would hold within it an entirely different portrayal of every poem. The spacing, spelling, grammar, and even wording changes. I had never before seen editors take such liberties with an author’s works as to change them in this way, and so I went back to my Professor and asked which anthologies I should use for comparison. I was told, then, that Thomas H. Johnson’s collection was the closest, in print, to what Dickinson actually wrote, especially in terms to her use of dashes.
What I learned is that Johnson, who I was told bore the closest resemblance to Emily’s poems, still presented very different poems from what is written in these facsimiles.
One of the reasons for the differences is that Emily’s handwriting is very, very difficult to read. Her use of punctuation and dashes seem to vary and, in many instances, her poems are not concrete. Many lines of her poetry have a variety of wording options written on the page, as if she was mulling over using this word versus that or that or that word, and in some cases, alternate lines are written at the end of a line, possible additions or changes, all moving along within the poems. It is quite fascinating to see a poem that you are reading shift, change, slant as you read it. It is as if you are gleaming a tiny piece of the artistic process that went into the work itself.
I was so interested in my brief project that years later, I requested a copy of these for my library, which I still possess and cherish. It is not my go to book for Dickinson poems, despite the authenticity, due to its difficulty, but it is absolutely necessary for anyone that wants to read the words Dickinson has actually written.
I highly recommend this to any and all Dickinson scholars who are interested in learning more about the poet and her writing process.
March 4, 2014
Wow. Wow. Wow. It's wonderful to read the poems you know, and new poems by Emily in their original context.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews