Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters

by Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson

Overview

When the complete Letters of Emily Dickinson appeared in three volumes in 1958, Robert Kirsch welcomed them in the Los Angeles Times, saying “The missives offer access to the mind and heart of one of America’s most intriguing literary personalities.” This one-volume selection is at last available in paperback. It provides crucial texts for the appreciation of American literature, women’s experience in the nineteenth century, and literature in general.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674250703
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/15/1986
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

• Publisher’s Note
• Introduction
• I. 1842–1846: “…the Hens lay finely…”
• II. 1847–1848: “I am really at Mt Holyoke…”
• III. 1849–1850: “Amherst is alive with fun this winter…”
• IV. 1851–1854: “…we do not have much poetry, father having made up his mind that its pretty much all real life.”
• V. 1855–1857: “To live, and die, and mount again in triumphant body…
  is no schoolboy’s theme!”
• VI. 1858–1861: “Much has occurred…so much that I stagger as I write,
  in its sharp remembrance.”
• VII. 1862–1865: “Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that—
  My Business is Circumference.”
• VIII. 1866–1869: “A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.”
• IX. 1870–1874: “I find ecstasy in living the mere sense of living is joy enough.”
• X. 1875–1879: “Nature is a Haunted House but Art—
  a House that tries to be haunted.”
• XI. 1880–1883: “I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few and each must be the chiefest…”
• XII. 1884–1886: “…a Letter is a joy of Earth it is denied the Gods.”
• Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Recipients of Letters and of Persons Mentioned in Them
• Index

Editorial Reviews

[These letters] present us with as inward a view of one of God’s rarer creatures as we are likely to be given… The letters themselves are as no others. The briefest line can be a mystery (and, when fathomed, a communion), the formal note a sign… If [these letters] are put alongside those of…Coleridge and Keats, they will present the most striking contrast in a poet’s reactions and sensibilities. But they will stand there unashamed.

The Times

She was no solemn bookworm destined to grow into a crabbed recluse, but a lively original creature, fully participating in the joys and despairs of a busy circle of friends and relatives… Here was a woman capable of the most intense emotion who was forced, or forced herself, to crystallize her feelings into words and phrases. The letters and poems are all of a piece. The letters, in fact, read sometimes like the raw materials of the poems.

Listener

[These letters] present us with as inward a view of one of God's rarer creatures as we are likely to be given... The letters themselves are as no others. The briefest line can be a mystery (and, when fathomed, a communion), the formal note a sign... If [these letters] are put alongside those of...Coleridge and Keats, they will present the most striking contrast in a poet's reactions and sensibilities. But they will stand there unashamed.-- "The Times"

Emily Dickinson's letters are among the major treasures of American literature... [In] this one-volume selection...virtually everything of interest to the general reader or nonspecialist has been retained.-- "Library Journal"

She was no solemn bookworm destined to grow into a crabbed recluse, but a lively original creature, fully participating in the joys and despairs of a busy circle of friends and relatives... Here was a woman capable of the most intense emotion who was forced, or forced herself, to crystallize her feelings into words and phrases. The letters and poems are all of a piece. The letters, in fact, read sometimes like the raw materials of the poems.-- "Listener"

From the Publisher

[These letters] present us with as inward a view of one of God’s rarer creatures as we are likely to be given… The letters themselves are as no others. The briefest line can be a mystery (and, when fathomed, a communion), the formal note a sign… If [these letters] are put alongside those of…Coleridge and Keats, they will present the most striking contrast in a poet’s reactions and sensibilities. But they will stand there unashamed.

The Times

Based on the proceedings of an international symposium organized by the Food Chemistry Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry at the U. of East Anglia, Norwich, England, March 1990. The central theme is the role of food macromolecules in determining the stability, structure, texture, and rheology of food colloids, with particular reference to gelling behavior and interactions between macromolecules and interfaces. A notable feature is the wide range of physicochemical techniques which are now being used to address the problems in this field. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews