I’ve been writing about the time when, shortly after Emily Dickinson’s death, the poet’s sister, Lavinia, visited Mabel Loomis Todd with a box full of Emily’s poems. Todd recognized immediately the box contained “a veritable treasure.”
She then organized the poems into three categories: finished poems (i.e., those Dickinson had copied into her fascicles); those in “rough form” but contained “breath-taking thoughts,” and fragments with “merely the glint of an idea.”
Todd then selected about two hundred of the poems which she deemed the best, and off she went to consult with Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
On November 6, 1889, Higginson visited Todd’s home to review the poems and to discuss (from his diary) “the best way of editing them.”
He had suggested that Todd sort “the best ones, and (her) own favorites” into three groups; from Todd’s journal:
“A – Not only those of most original thought, but expressed in the best form…B, those with striking ideas, but with too many of her peculiarities of construction to be used unaltered for the public, and C, those I considered too obscure or too irregular in form for public use, however brilliant and suggestive.”
In a number of days, Todd finished this task and sent the classified poems to Higginson. He wrote back to Todd:
“I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying the poems. There are many new to me which take my breath away and which also have form beyond most of those I have seen before.”
Higginson was very much worried about Dickinson’s “form” as evidenced by his preface to the 1890 publication of Dickinson’s “Poems.” I wrote about that HERE.
Higginson sorted through Todd’s selections (“rejecting some – provisionally”), and he divided the rest into three headings:
He was now very excited about the project and told Todd that the plates for the book’s pages would cost $1 per page, and since some pages could contain more than one poem, the total cost would be about $230 for 250 pages with 300 poems.
“Would that satisfy Miss Lavinia?” he asked.
She then organized the poems into three categories: finished poems (i.e., those Dickinson had copied into her fascicles); those in “rough form” but contained “breath-taking thoughts,” and fragments with “merely the glint of an idea.”
Todd then selected about two hundred of the poems which she deemed the best, and off she went to consult with Dickinson’s friend and mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
On November 6, 1889, Higginson visited Todd’s home to review the poems and to discuss (from his diary) “the best way of editing them.”
He had suggested that Todd sort “the best ones, and (her) own favorites” into three groups; from Todd’s journal:
“A – Not only those of most original thought, but expressed in the best form…B, those with striking ideas, but with too many of her peculiarities of construction to be used unaltered for the public, and C, those I considered too obscure or too irregular in form for public use, however brilliant and suggestive.”
In a number of days, Todd finished this task and sent the classified poems to Higginson. He wrote back to Todd:
“I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying the poems. There are many new to me which take my breath away and which also have form beyond most of those I have seen before.”
Higginson was very much worried about Dickinson’s “form” as evidenced by his preface to the 1890 publication of Dickinson’s “Poems.” I wrote about that HERE.
Higginson sorted through Todd’s selections (“rejecting some – provisionally”), and he divided the rest into three headings:
- Life
- Nature
- Time, Death, and Eternity
He was now very excited about the project and told Todd that the plates for the book’s pages would cost $1 per page, and since some pages could contain more than one poem, the total cost would be about $230 for 250 pages with 300 poems.
“Would that satisfy Miss Lavinia?” he asked.
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