Todd then turned to Dickinson’s friend and mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson for help.
Below, left to right: Mabel Loomis Todd, Lavinia Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Todd realized that “all could not be taken to him” so she organized “the vast conglomerate of poems” into three categories Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham described her mother’s classifications as follows:
“Those which Emily had copied into the little ‘volumes’ were finished poems. Others, though rough in form, contained breath-taking thoughts. Still others had merely the glint of an idea, jotted down for future use.”
After categorizing the poems Todd wrote in her journal, “I selected from among the hundreds of copied poems about two hundred of the most characteristic, most different from the mediocre verse being put forth in papers and magazines. Armed with what seemed to me the most remarkable poems written within recent years, I went to Cambridge to interrogate Mr. Higginson.”
And what was Mr. Higginson’s reaction and his advice?
I’ll cover that tomorrow! Stay tuned!