Eliza Richards is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Author of Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe's Circle (Cambridge University Press, 2004), she has published essays on American literature and culture in journals such as Arizona Quarterly, ESQ, Amerikastudien/American Studies, Poe Studies, the Yale Journal of Criticism and Victorian Poetry.

• List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgments and note on the text; List of abbreviations; Chronology; Introduction Eliza Richards; Part I. Local Environments: 1. Amherst Domhnall Mitchell; 2. Reading in the Dickinson libraries Eleanor Elson Heginbotham; 3. Education Angela Sorby; 4. New England Puritan heritage Jane Donahue Eberwein; 5. Nature's influence Margaret H. Freeman; Part II. Literary Contexts: Sources, Influences, Intertextual Engagements: 6. The Bible Emily Seelbinder; 7. Shakespeare Páraic Finnerty; 8. Renaissance and eighteenth-century literature David Cody; 9. British Romantic and Victorian influences Elizabeth Petrino; 10. Transatlantic women writers Páraic Finnerty; 11. Immediate US literary predecessors Cristanne Miller; 12. US literary contemporaries: Dickinson's moderns Mary Loeffelholz; 13. Periodical reading Joan Kirkby; Part III. Social, Cultural, Political, and Intellectual Contexts: 14. Religion James McIntosh; 15. Death and immortality Joan Kirkby; 16. Gendered poetics Shira Wolosky; 17. Democratic politics Paul Crumbley; 18. Economics Elizabeth Hewitt; 19. Law and legal discourse James Guthrie; 20. Slavery and the Civil War Faith Barrett; 21. Popular culture Sandra Runzo; 22. Visual arts: the Pentimento Alexander Nemerov; 23. Natural sciences Sabine Sielke; 24. Nineteenth-century language theory and the manuscript variants Melanie Hubbard; 25. 'Say some philosopher!' Jed Deppman; Part IV. Reception: 26. Editorial history I: beginnings to 1955 Martha Nell Smith; 27. Editorial history II: 1955 to the present Alexandra Socarides; 28. On materiality (and virtuality) Gabrielle Dean; 29. The letters archive Cindy MacKenzie; 30. Critical history I: 1890 to 1955 Theo Davis; 31. Critical history II: 1955 to the present Magdalena Zapedowska; 32. Dickinson's influence Thomas Gardner; 33. Translation and international reception Domhnall Mitchell; Further reading; Index.

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