Books with author Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), the reclusive and intensely private poet saw only a few of her poems (she wrote well over a thousand) published during her life. After discovering a trove of manuscripts left in a wooden box, Dickinson's sister Lavinia fortunately chose to disobey Emily's wishes for her work to be burned after death. With the help of Amherst professors, Lavinia brought her sister's gifted verse into print. It is here, in "The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson", that we witness her singular poetic depth and range of style. Collected are the first three series of her posthumous publishing career coming out respectively in 1890, 1891, and 1896. The myth that surrounds Dickinson's life is enhanced by the ethereal quality of her poetry. With the coming of New Criticism in the 1930's and 40's, Dickinson experienced unprecedented posthumous acclaim, solidifying her place in American letters. Dickinson's idiom is as varied as her meter, and her unconventional use of punctuation, metaphor, and image make her an innovator of the lyric akin to many of the early modernists. These poems examine love, death, and nature with an effortless yet complex tone and voice. Now one of the most read and admired American poets, Dickinson's poetry continues to resonate with readers.

Nearly everyone who's had a brush with American lit knows the story of Emily Dickinson - her poetry unpublished in her lifetime, and then even after her death, her verses seeing the light of day only after having been "improved" on by an editor who found her rhymes imperfect and her meter "spasmodic." He even went so far as to make her metaphors "sensible."

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, 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.In 2016, Terence Davies released A Quiet Passion, a biographical film about the life of Emily Dickinson. The film stars Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive poet. It co-stars Emma Bell as young Dickinson, Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff and Keith Carradine.

The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio,"-something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind. Such verse must inevitably forfeit whatever advantage lies in the discipline of public criticism and the enforced conformity to accepted ways. On the other hand, it may often gain something through the habit of freedom and the unconventional utterance of daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that she was persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great abundance; and though brought curiously indifferent to all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous literary standard of her own, and often altered a word many times to suit an ear which had its own tenacious fastidiousness.