In addition to having to decipher Dickinson’s handwriting, they also had to figure out which words she might have landed on (among her various alternative word choices listed on pages of her poetry) had she finalized all of her poems. They also made corrections to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.
On one hand, some of Dickinson’s grammatical errors can be “traceable to the fact that she followed current spoken usage” of the time (from p. 42 of “Ancestors’ Brocades).
On the other hand, “for the first editors the perennial uncertainty was: which are mistakes and which are intentional irregularities with a definite function to perform.”
For example: there is an interesting story behind Dickinson’s deliberate misspelling of “ankle” as “ancle” in “Of Tribulation – these are they,” HERE.
Following the publication of the first edition of “Poems” in 1890, Thomas Wentworth Higginson received a letter from Julia Eastman, one of the joint principals of a school for girls.
“Dear Sir,” wrote Ms. Eastman, “Would it be an ‘impertinence’ – to borrow your own word (from the preface of the book) – to ask if one change might not be made in the next edition of Emily Dickinson’s Poems?
On page 119, in the line, ‘When one who died for truth was lain,' could not ‘laid’ be substituted without harming the poem? The poem on the following page has the same error in the last stanza, but an amendation would be more troublesome there.”
Ms. Eastman added, “To most of the educated people of New England, the confusion of ‘lie’ & ‘lay’ is condoned with some difficulty.”
Sooo…how is your own expertise with “lie” and “lay”? LOL – should I prepare a quiz for tomorrow?
For now, here are the two poems in question (click the images below to enlarge).