Synopses & Reviews
Review
[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
Review
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
Review
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
Synopsis
A one volume selection from the complete Letters of Emily Dickinson.
Synopsis
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 paper-back. It provides crucial texts for the appreciation of America literature, women's experience in the ninteenth century, and literature in general.
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