Since then, many critics have argued that there is a thematic unity in these small collections, rather than their order being simply chronological or convenient. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her intended order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures, and other clues to reassemble the packets. The original order of the poems was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. The current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with an en-dash, which is a closer typographical approximation to her intention. The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, who removed her annotations. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical).

Dickinson assembled these booklets by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems. Upon her death, Dickinson’s family discovered forty handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems, or “fascicles,” as they are sometimes called. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. While Dickinson was extremely prolific and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumors of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats.

Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also lived at home, and she and Austin were intellectual companions for Dickinson during her lifetime.ĭickinson’s poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. Her brother, Austin, who attended law school and became an attorney, lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Hope poem by emily dickinson