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