What IF Emily Dickinson’s family had burned all of her letters and poetry following her death – as was the practice in the late 1800s? We would never have even heard of her name.
But in 1890, Dickinson’s brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, with help from Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, published a first edition of Dickinson’s work. It included 116 poems.
Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems (according to Franklin’s count in his 1998 edition of her poetry), so that first volume included 6.5% of her writings.
By 1896, Todd had published two more volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, so that brought the total publication of her work up to 25%.
Then in 1898, due to a bitter lawsuit between Dickinson’s sister Lavinia and Mabel Loomis over a tract of land, Todd locked up all of the remaining poems and letters she had in her possession in a camphor-wood chest – and there they remained until she and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham unlocked the chest in 1929.
“What I might find within,” wrote Bingham in the introduction to her 1945 book “Bolts of Melody,” “I did not know.”
“I looked and caught my breath. For there, before my eyes, were quantities of Emily’s poems. How could they have kept quiet so long? With such inherent vitality it seemed as if they must have shouted, lying there in the dark all these years.”
At that point, Todd and Bingham began deciphering the works, and they published over 600 “new poems of Emily Dickinson” in 1945:
“Like the dormant life-germ of a plant these verses, buried for sixty years, are at last reaching light and air in full vitality.”
More on “Bolts of Melody” tomorrow.
But in 1890, Dickinson’s brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, with help from Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, published a first edition of Dickinson’s work. It included 116 poems.
Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems (according to Franklin’s count in his 1998 edition of her poetry), so that first volume included 6.5% of her writings.
By 1896, Todd had published two more volumes of Dickinson’s poetry, so that brought the total publication of her work up to 25%.
Then in 1898, due to a bitter lawsuit between Dickinson’s sister Lavinia and Mabel Loomis over a tract of land, Todd locked up all of the remaining poems and letters she had in her possession in a camphor-wood chest – and there they remained until she and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham unlocked the chest in 1929.
“What I might find within,” wrote Bingham in the introduction to her 1945 book “Bolts of Melody,” “I did not know.”
“I looked and caught my breath. For there, before my eyes, were quantities of Emily’s poems. How could they have kept quiet so long? With such inherent vitality it seemed as if they must have shouted, lying there in the dark all these years.”
At that point, Todd and Bingham began deciphering the works, and they published over 600 “new poems of Emily Dickinson” in 1945:
“Like the dormant life-germ of a plant these verses, buried for sixty years, are at last reaching light and air in full vitality.”
More on “Bolts of Melody” tomorrow.
RSS Feed
