FOREWORD

This edition of the poetry of Emily Dickinson includes all the seventeen hundred seventy-five poems, together with the variants, that she is known to have written.  Since the greater part of her manuscripts survive, it has been possible to assign to most of the poems a relative chronology.  The dating of them is conjectural and for the most part will always remain so.  Dates have been adduced by all scraps of evidence, associative and direct, including painstaking studies of handwriting and of stationery.       Emily Dickinson was born to her talent but she felt no dedication to her art until she was about twenty-eight years old, in 1858.  By 1862 her creative impulse was at flood tide, and by 1865 the greater part of her poetic energies were spent.  She continued to write poetry until her death in 1886, when she was fifty-five years old, and many of the later verses are among her great creations. But after 1870 her poems are relatively few in number and were often composed for an occasion and for the friends to whom they were sent.       Throughout her life people were of the utmost importance to her, but direct contacts exhausted her emotionally to such an extent that she shrank from all but the most intimate.  Thus her seclusion became nearly absolute in the last decade of her life.  This is not to say that she withdrew from the outside world. On the contrary, she associated steadily with the friends of her selection through the medium of letters. Her correspondence was voluminous and the letters of her later years share a measure of the permanence of her poetry.       But poetry was the art for which her life was set apart and to it all else was ancillary.  So unwilling was she to be diverted from her calling, from her own originalities which those capable of evaluating only dimly understood, that she made deliberate choice of obscurity in her own lifetime.  She was right in her assurance that if fame belonged to her, she could not in the end escape it.   T.H.J.

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

Seldom can a publisher of books write with the wholehearted satisfaction that is mine a prefatory statement for a new work about to be issued.  The publication of this edition of the poems of Emily Dickinson is an epoch-making event, the culmination of more than a half-century of effort by Dickinson students, and thus a source of pride to all concerned.  Here in these three volumes are united all the poems known to have been written by ED, with all their variants, and with the poet's own preferred text of each poem identified.  The years spent by Thomas H. Johnson on this undertaking have resulted in an out-standing work of literary scholarship, indispensable for students of American intellectual history and forever to be cherished by lovers of poetry.       Harvard University, through its Press, is proud to publish Mr. Johnson's definitive edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson and glad to acknowledge its great debts to two of its sons whose generosity has made the publication possible: Gilbert H. Montague by his gift to Harvard University Library provided funds for the purchase of the poet's manuscripts and other papers from the heir to the literary estate; and the late Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr., by his bequest for scholarly publishing created The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, the imprint under which this edition is now published.  In accomplishing the purposes of these two benefactors, the publishers have been notably assisted by the unselfish devotion of Mrs. Waldron P. Belknap, mother of the founder of The Belknap Press.  It is a pleasure to record our thanks to her here, in the first pages of one of the great publications to bear her son's name.       The thanks of the publishers are also due to the staff of Harvard University Library for unfailing and intelligent collaboration throughout an arduous task of editing and publishing.  In particular we are indebted to William A. Jackson and Keyes D. Metcalf by whose efforts the Houghton Library has become a center of Dickinson materials xi

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

and Dickinson scholarship, and this present publication has been made possible.       Grateful and general acknowledgment is made hereby, for the University, to Little, Brown and Company and Houghton Muffin Company for permission to print in these volumes the Dickinson poems and other documents which are under copyright and have been published by these firms.  The details of our borrowings from the publications of these houses are stated elsewhere by Mr. Johnson in his presentation of the poems themselves, and formal acknowledgment of copyright is made on the verso of the title page.       It must be stated here that The President and Fellows of Harvard College claim the sole ownership of and sole right of possession in all the Emily Dickinson manuscripts now in the possession of Mrs. Millicent Todd Bingham, and all the literary rights and copyrights therein, by virtue of Harvard's purchase agreement in 1950 with Alfred Leete Hampson, heir of Emily Dickinson's niece, Mrs. Martha Dickinson Bianchi.                                                             THOMAS J. WILSON June 1955                                          Director, Harvard University Press    xii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express thanks for the help rendered by those who have served this undertaking in an advisory capacity: Mr. Frederick B. Adams, Jr., Mr. Edward C. Aswell, Mr. Julian P. Boyd, and Mr. Robert E. Spiller.  I acknowledge the courtesy of Mrs. Millicent Todd Bingham in making available for study and photostating all of the large number of manuscripts of Dickinson poetry in her possession.  She gave of her time, and placed in my hands for study the great number of transcripts of the poems that had been made by her mother, Mabel Loomis Todd, during the years 1887-1896 when Mrs. Todd was undertaking the first editing of the poetry of Emily Dickinson.  Mrs. Raymond W. Jones gave material aid by the loan of books and family papers.  Mr. William H. McCarthy permitted me to draw freely upon his intimate knowledge of the Dickinson papers.  Mr. Russell S. Smith placed at my disposal a copy of his unpublished thesis "A Dickinson Bibliography" (Brown University, 1948), together with an unpublished study of Dickinson's use of the Bible. Mr. Michael A. Weinberg spent many scores of hours analyzing the stationery.       I wish to thank the following individuals and institutions for permission to study and make use of the manuscripts in their possession: Dr. J. Dellinger Barney, Mr. Clifton Waller Barrett, Dr. Mary A. Bennett, Mrs. Graham B. Blame, Mr. Francis Bowles, Mrs. John Nicholas Brown, Mr. Orton L. Clark, President Charles W. Cole, Mr. H. B. Collamore, Miss Elizabeth S. Dickerman, Miss Marion E. Dodd, Miss Julia S. L. Dwight, Mrs. William Esty, Mrs. Howard B. Field, the Rev. John Fletcher, Mrs. Leon Godchaux, Mrs. William L.Hallowell, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Mr. Parkman Howe, Miss Helen Jackson, Miss Marcelle Lane, Mr. Josiah K. Lilly, Mr. Samuel Loveman, Mr. Thomas 0. Mabbott, Mr. Julian E. Mack, Mrs. William Tyler Mather, Miss Katherine Morse, Mr. A. Norcross, Mrs. Hervey C. Parke, Mrs. Frederick J. Pohl, Miss Edith xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

L. Pinnick, Mrs. Fairfield Porter, Mrs. J. Frederic Scull, Mrs. Doheny H.Sessions, Mrs. Susan H. Skillings, Mrs. Grant Squires, and Mrs. Elizabeth S. Walcott:       The American Antiquarian Society; The Boston Public Library; Colby College Library; The Converse Memorial Library, and the Edward Hitchcock Memorial Room, Amherst College; Goodell Library, University of Massachusetts; The Houghton Library, Library of Harvard University; The Huntington Memorial Library, Oneonta, New York; The Iowa State Department of History and Archives, Des Moines; The Jones Library, Amherst; The Library of Congress; The Pierpont Morgan Library; The New York Public Library; Princeton University Library; Smith College Library; Wellesley College Library; Williston Memorial Library, Mount Holyoke College; and Yale University Library.       It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help extended to the enterprise by those librarians whose assistance has been extensive.  Mr. Charles R. Green, of The Jones Library, not only took special pains to make his collections available but also assisted by putting me in touch with owners of manuscripts and memorabilia.  Mr. Newton F. McKeon, director of the Amherst College Library, and Mr. Zoltan Haraszti, curator of manuscripts in the Boston Public Library, both allowed the Dickinson papers in their collections to be submitted to special study.  Mr. William A. Jackson and the members of the staff of the Houghton Library at Harvard, where most of the labor was performed, have eased the editorial burdens on all occasions with enlightenment and with an unobtrusive thoughtfulness for which I feel warm gratitude.       On certain points touching upon Dickinson associations I have been aided by those who have supplied their reminiscences.  For such kindness I am especially in debt to the late Margaret (Mrs. Orton L.) Clark, to Miss Louise B. Graves, to Mr. Robert P. Esty, and to Dr. Kendall Emerson.        Most helpful too have been those who have volunteered or responded to requests for information: Mrs. Helen H. Arnold, Mr. Alvan Barrus, Mrs. William Penn Cresson, Miss Margaret P. Hamlin, Mrs. Alfred Leete Hampson, and Mrs. Stuart Reynolds.  Constantly xiv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

useful has been Miss Louise K. Kelly's unpublished thesis, "A Concordance of Emily Dickinson's Poems" (Pennsylvania State College, 1951).  Mr. Willard Thorp graciously consented to read portions of the introduction.   The grant of a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation gave assurance that this undertaking, complex and ramifying, could be brought to a successful conclusion.   I wish especially to own with gratitude my debt to three persons. The late George Frisbie Whicher from the moment this task was begun let me share his expert knowledge and partake his enthusiasm; all his personal files he placed at my disposal. Jay Leyda generously offered material that he has gleaned in preparation for a documentary record of the life of Emily Dickinson on which he is engaged; his researches have corrected errors of fact and his evaluations have on occasion altered my judgments. The editorial assistance of Theodora Van Wagenen Ward has immeasurably lightened the task of preparing this edition.  She has acted as counselor in all matters of plan and execution, while devoting her time chiefly to the letters, now being prepared for publication. She wrote the section in the introduction on "Characteristics of the Handwriting," and compiled the subject index. Lawrenceville, New Jersey                    THOMAS H. JOHNSON 27 April 1955     xv

CREATING THE POEMS THE POET AND THE MUSE

On April fifteenth, 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote a professional man of letters to inquire whether her verses "breathed." She was then thirty-one years old. At the time she dispatched her letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, he had recently resigned from his Unitarian pulpit in Worcester to devote himself entirely to writing. Of Puritan New England stock, he was a graduate of Harvard College (1841) and Harvard Divinity School, and though not yet forty he had already made a name for himself as essayist, lecturer, and participant in the cause of liberal reform. Emily Dickinson dared bring herself to his attention because she had just read the "Letter to a Young Contributor" that he had written as the lead article in the Atlantic Monthly for April. It was practical advice for beginners, written with genial, well-bred kindliness. One sentence she would quote back to him many years later, and it is a clue to the reason that she now felt emboldened to write him: "Such being the majesty of the art you presume to practice, you can at least take time before dishonoring it." His article drew responses and specimens of verse, all of which, Higginson wrote James T. Fields, the editor of the Atlantic, were "not for publication." Yet, in spite of that judgment, Higginson immediately answered Miss Dickinson's letter, asking her to send more poems, inquiring her age, her reading, her companionships, and requesting further details about her writing.   She replied at some length, withholding her age but responding to his other questions with a freedom from reticence that reveals the depth of her need for literary companionship. One sentence in this second letter surely misled Higginson as it has all others since the letter was published. "I made no verse —," she says, "but one or two — until this winter — Sir — ," and cryptically hints as a reason for her new diversion certain emotional disturbances.  The remark is a classic of xvii

INTRODUCTION

understatement. When Emily Dickinson wrote that letter to Higginson, she had in fact composed not fewer than three hundred poems, and was bringing others into being at a rate which would double the number by the end of the year.  Her creative energies were at flood, and she was being overwhelmed by forces which she could not control.       As the story can be reconstructed, at some time during the year 1858 Emily Dickinson began assembling her poems into packets.  Always in ink, they are gatherings of four, five, or six sheets of letter paper usually folded once but sometimes single.  They are loosely held together by thread looped through them at the spine at two points equidistant from the top and bottom.  When opened up they may be read like a small book, a fact that explains why Emily's sister Lavinia, when she discovered them after Emily's death, referred to them as "volumes." All of the packet poems are either fair copies or semifinal drafts, and they constitute two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry.       For the most part the poems in a given packet seem to have been written and assembled as a unit.  Since rough drafts of packet poems are almost totally lacking, one concludes that they were systematically discarded.1 If the poems were in fact composed at the time the copies were made, as the evidence now seems to point, one concludes that nearly two-thirds of her poems were created in the brief span of eight years, centering on her early thirties.  Her interest in the packet method of assembling the verses thus coincides with the years of fullest productivity. In 1858 she gathered some fifty poems into packets. There are nearly one hundred so transcribed in 1859, some sixty-five in 1860, and in 1861 more than eighty. By 1862 the creative drive must have been almost frightening; during that year she transcribed into packets no fewer than three hundred and sixty-six poems, the greater part of them complete and final texts.       1There are forty-nine packets. The number of poems in a packet depends on the length of the poem and the number of sheets that form the gathering.  One packet has as few as eight poems, one as many as thirty, but the average is about twenty. Beginning in 1858, they uniformly include all poetry through 1865.  Three packets were assembled later: one in 1866, another in 1871 (to which one sheet dating from about 1875 was added), and one in 1872. xviii

CREATING THE POEMS

Whether this incredible number was in fact composed in that year or represents a transcription of earlier worksheet drafts can never be established by direct evidence.  But the pattern established during the preceding four years reveals a gathering momentum, and the quality of tenseness and prosodic skill uniformly present in the poems of 1861-1862 bears scant likeness to the conventionality of theme and treatment in the poems of 1858-1859.  Excepting a half dozen occasional verses written in the early fifties, there is not a single scrap of poetry that can be dated earlier than 1858.       The issue is not necessarily material as far as her motive in writing Higginson is concerned, except as her need to do so had now become imperative, For her the portentous question was a practical one.  Assembled about her was a teeming body of verse, and somehow a way of sharing it must be found. As it happens, there were to be three more years of full creativeness. In 1863 she wrote some one hundred forty poems; in 1864, nearly two hundred; and about eighty or so in 1865.  After that, throughout her life, the yearly average never exceeded twenty, one half of which never progressed beyond the work-sheet stage.  Though several of the later poems are imperishable lyrics, she would never again be driven by the frenzy that possessed her in the early sixties.  She achieved an intensity, passionate and often despairing, in those years which gives to it the quality of "circumference" and "awe" that she sought.  The question now was what to do with these rapidly growing assemblages of manuscript.       One of the unanswered questions is what happened to the poems that Emily Dickinson wrote in her youth.  Aside from two valentines, there are only three verses that can be identified surely as having been written before 1858 and all are incorporated in letters.  One is to her brother Austin, and the others to her friend Susan Gilbert.  All are sentimental in tone and commonplace in thought. Pore as one may over the verses in the early packets to identify those which offer clues to earlier associations, only the most tenuous appear.  One poem, "All overgrown by cunning moss," commemorates the death of Charlotte Brontë in 1855.  But the very first line indicates the passage of time. The  four-stanza poem "I like to see it lap the miles" expresses excite- xix

INTRODUCTION

ment about the novelty of a steam locomotive.  The opening of the two local railroad branches in Amherst in 1853 was something of an event. But the only copy of the poem is a semifinal draft written about 1862, four years after she commenced making her packets and there-fore much later than one would expect to find the poem in packet form were earlier poems being transcribed.  In one instance only is there positive evidence that early poems were gathered into packets.  The poem sent to Sue in 1853, "On this wondrous sea" (no. 4), is duplicated in a packet of 1858, Perhaps 1858 was the year of Emily Dickinson's assurance of her destiny.       Though one may he reasonably sure that she wrote more than five poems before 1858 – in fact, many more – one begins to question whether there were many that she thought worth preserving by the time she began fashioning her packets.  A pattern emerges in her life during the fifties that seems to have direct bearing on her function, not as an artist – that will come later, but as a writer of verse.       In the late forties Benjamin Franklin Newton was a law student in the office of Emily's father, Edward Dickinson.  In 1850 Newton set up a practice for himself in Worcester, and in the following year he married.  In March 1853, in his thirty-third year, he died of tuberculosis.  Ben Newton had been one of Emily's earliest "preceptors," and his memory always remained with her.  He was a Unitarian and considered somewhat advanced in his thinking.  While in Amherst he had introduced the Dickinson girls to the writings of the Brontë sisters and of the feminist Lydia Maria Child.  He presented Emily with a copy of Emerson's poems in 1849, two years after they were published and many years before Emerson was accepted as a representative spokesman of his time. Newton awakened in Emily Dickinson a response to intellectual independence and a delight in literature which later made her call him the "friend who taught me Immortality."  She told Higginson in the summer of 1862, after he had praised some verses that she sent him: "Your letter gave no Drunkenness, because I tasted Rum before . . . My dying Tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet, but Death was much of Mob as I could master — then." xx

CREATING THE POEMS

It would thus appear that when Emily Dickinson was about twenty years old her latent talents were invigorated by a gentle, grave young man who taught her how to observe the world.  She made the statement to Higginson that "for several years" after her tutor's death her lexicon was her only companion. Perhaps during the five years after Newton's death she was trying to fashion verses n a desultory manner.  Her muse had left the land and she must await the coming of another.  That event occurred in 1858 or 1859 in the person of the Reverend Charles Wadsworth.       Still predominant among nature poems belonging to 1859 are such effusions as "Whose cheek is this," but there is also "Bring me the sunset in a cup," and "These are the days when birds come back." This is also the year of "Safe in their alabaster chambers," "Our share of night to bear," and "Success."  In the following year, though their number is still few, are an increasing proportion of poems written with firmer texture and deepened purpose: "Just lost, when I was saved," "I shall know why — when Time is over," and "At last, to he identified." By 1861 the number of poems dealing sentimentally with nature is on the wane, supplanted by poems of immediate, sometimes violent intensity: "I can wade grief," "What would I give to see his face," "I like a look of agony," and "Wild nights, wild nights." Poems beginning with the personal pronoun are conspicuous.  A volcanic commotion is becoming apparent in the emotional life of Emily Dickinson.  Though all evidence is circumstantial and will always remain so, the inescapable conclusion seems to he that about this time she fell in love with Wadsworth.  (A later attachment for Judge Otis P. Lord of Salem had no effect whatsoever on her poetry or her creative talent as a poet, and is therefore not relevant to this discussion.)       Charles Wadsworth was the pastor of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1850 until April 1862.  When Emily and Lavinia returned from a three-week visit in Washington in April 1854, where they had been with their father, then serving as a member of Congress, they stopped over in Philadelphia for two weeks early in May as guests of their old school friend Eliza Coleman, whose father, the Reverend Lyman Coleman, had been their principal back in xxi

INTRODUCTION

Amherst Academy days.  Though there is no record of the event, one supposes that Emily went to bear Wadsworth preach. Perhaps she met him then.  The only certain early fact is that he called on her some five years later while he was still in mourning after his mother's death in October 1859.       That visit and another he made briefly in the summer of 1880, are the only two known, and quite possibly the only ones he ever made.  But letters that she wrote after his death on April first, 1882, state much and imply more. Twice she calls Wadsworth her "closest" or "dearest earthly friend."  She says that he was her "shepherd from little girl' hood" and that she cannot conjecture a world without him. A year later she wrote her dear friend, Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland: "All other Surprise is at last monotonous, but the Death of the Loved is all moments — now.  Love has but one Date — 'The first of April' 'Today, Yesterday, and Forever.'"       Over the years she had come to envision him as a "Man of Sorrow," and "a dusk gem, born of troubled waters."  Both visits were probably made at her request on occasions when he happened to be traveling nearby.  The letters they exchanged did not survive her death.  Those that she wrote to him, sent in covering notes to be forwarded by Mrs. Holland, were not so handled to mask a surreptitious romance.  Neither Dr. nor Mrs. Holland would have cared to be party to such dealings.  The procedure was one that Emily Dickinson adopted for many of her later transactions with the outside world.  Except to her sister Lavinia, who never saw Wadsworth, she talked to no one about him.  That fact alone establishes the place he filled in the structure of her emotion.  Whereas Newton as muse had awakened her to a sense of her talents, Wadsworth as muse made her a poet.       The Philadelphia pastor, now forty-seven, was at the zenith of his mature influence, fifteen years married and the head of a family, an established man of God whose rectitude was unquestioned.  To her it was a basic necessity that he continue in all ways to be exactly the image of him that she had created.  The fantasy that Wadsworth proposed an elopement has no basis in fact, and controverts all that is known of the psychology of either.  The "bridal" and renunciation xxii

CREATING THE POEMS

poems, almost all of which were written in 1861 and 1862, have meaning when interpreted as a part of her lifelong need for a shepherd, a muse whom she could adore with physical passion in her imagination.  The extent to which Wadsworth realized the nature of her adoration can only he conjectured. He was a cosmopolitan minister of ready perceptions.  Her eagerness after his death to learn from his lifelong friend, James D. Clark, details of his life and personality, about which she says herself she knew little or nothing, is a measure of his reticences as a person.  When she initiated her correspondence with Higginson, she turned to one who could serve as a critic of her verse, which she was now writing with daemonic energy.  She soon came to call Higginson her "preceptor" and her "safest friend," and quite literally he became both to her.  But he was never what Newton had once been, and Wadsworth overpoweringly came to be: the source of inspiration itself.   The crisis in Emily Dickinson's life seems to have been precipitated by Wadsworth's acceptance of a call to the Calvary Church in San Francisco in December 1861. One can believe that he casually mentioned, as long before as September, that he was considering the call. It is the plausible conjecture usually set forth to explain two sentences in her second letter to Higginson. Having spoken of losing the friend who taught her immortality, she goes on to say: "Then I found one more — but he was not contented to be his scholar — so he left the Land." And she gave as the primary reason for writing poetry at all: "I had a terror — since September — I could tell to none — and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid."       To Emily Dickinson, Wadsworth's removal was terrifying because she feared she might never be able to control her emotions or her reason without his guidance.  It is at this time that she began to dress entirely in white, adopting, as she calls it, her "white election."  The name Calvary now first appears in her poems.  In 1862 she used it nine times, always in verses charged with intense emotion.  She speaks of herself as "Queen" of Calvary.  Grieving for a lost lover or for one renounced, she recalls "old times in Calvary."  In the poem "Title Divine in mine," as "Empress of Calvary" she is "Born — Bridalled — xxiii

INTRODUCTION

Shrouded — in a Day." Once in I 863 it is introduced in the poem beginning "Where Thou art — that is Home/ Cashmere or Calvary — the Same . . . / So I may Come." No other place name is comparably used or anywhere nearly so often. As far as eye could peer, Wadsworth's function as preceptor must perforce cease.  It was during the time that he and his family were preparing to sail for California that Emily Dickinson initiated her correspondence with Higginson       It is significant that in June 1869, after Wadsworth's return from San Francisco had been publicly announced, Emily Dickinson wrote to Higginson inviting him to Amherst. "You were not aware," she says, "that you saved my Life.  To thank you in person has been since then one of my few requests." Higginson could know part of what she meant – that he had given her private audience for her poems.  But he could not know, as she of course was aware that he could not, in just what way he had provided a release from the tensions and preserved her sanity.  Two very unfinished worksheet drafts, which have every evidence of having been written in 1869, express a mood of jubilation. One deserves to be quoted: Oh Sumptuous moment Slower go That I may gloat on thee 'Twill never be the same to starve Now I abundance see — Which was to famish, then or now - The difference of Day Ask him unto the Gallows led — With morning in the sky       By 1870 Wadsworth was again established in Philadelphia, in another church, where he continued as pastor until his death.  The crisis in Emily Dickinson's life was over.  Though nothing again would wring from her the anguish and the fulfillment of the years 1861-1865, she continued to write verses throughout her life.  Proportionately the number of them is sharply decreased, but among them are many that embody her art at its serenest. xxiv

CREATING THE POEMS PRIVATE AUDIENCES

The first letter to Higginson had a far clearer purpose than he could be expected to penetrate, because the fact is that within the year two of Emily Dickinson's poems had been published in the Springfield Daily Republican, the second of them just two weeks before she wrote him.  Both had appeared anonymously. She does not ask Higginson whether he thinks her poetry is now ready for publication, but she certainly implies such a request, as he of course inferred. As she phrased it, is her verse "alive"? Does it "breathe"?       We can never know whether Emily Dickinson's fear of publication would have been mastered had her letter been addressed to a less timid critic.  It is certain that she required literary companionship and equally certain that the nature of her queries to Higginson have meaning only if the questioner has a public in mind.  She turned to an established man of letters, known to be especially sympathetic to the status of women in general and to women writers in particular, one who in his Atlantic article had addressed "young contributors," and praised the qualities she herself most admired: a belief in the majesty of the art she presumed to practice, and a profound respect for aptness and economy of language.  But Higginson the critic was not the man she should have written.  His taste was conventional and his perceptions limited. At the same time it should be said that the kinship on a personal level came to be mutually recognized, and over the years it took on a meaning for her quite apart from any value as a shaping force in her art.  Higginson became a literary mentor in some vague way created by her assurance of what he was as a kindly gentleman, rather than of what he might attempt to say as a judge of her writing. Had he responded with the insight that prompted Emerson to write his famous letter to Whitman, her literary career might well have begun during her lifetime.       Her realization that Higginson the critic had nothing to offer would come shortly.  Even before she wrote to him she had been made aware of the liberties that editors took with one's text, to smooth a rhyme or make a "sensible" metaphor, with the result that the printed object xxv

CREATING THE POEMS

before one were better disowned.  Her poem "I taste a liquor never brewed" had appeared in the "Original Poetry" column of the Republican just a year before, in May 1861.  As she had written the first stanza, it read: I taste a liquor never brewed — From Tankards scooped in Pearl — Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol! But the editors wanted a rhyme and they produced a version that could never, by any stretch of imagination, have been hers: I taste a liquor never brewed,     From tankards scooped in pearl; Not Frankfort berries yield the sense     Such a delirious whirl. The Republican editor, Samuel Bowles, and his associate Dr. J. G. Holland were close friends of the Dickinsons.  Emily sent them occasional verses in her letters, and they were urging her to let them publish some.  But they reserved the right to correct rhymes and alter figures of speech.  At the time she wrote Higginson she does not seem to be trying to avoid publishing.  On the contrary, she seems to be inquiring how one can publish and at the same time preserve the integrity of one's art.  The poem most recently published in the Republican, just six weeks before on March first, was the same version of "Safe in their alabaster chambers" that she enclosed in her first letter to Higginson  The other three were "The nearest dream recedes unrealized," "We play at paste," and "I'll tell you how the sun rose.  They had been selected with care and are in fact the work of a mature artist.  But she needed some confirmation from a professional judge because the only advice she had yet been given had come from an enthusiastic amateur and had not proved helpful.       It had been her custom, before she initiated her correspondence with Higginson, to turn for advice to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, her xxvi

CREATING THE POEMS

brother Austin's wife.  Vivacious, witty, and attractive, Sue was one of Emily's oldest and dearest friends.  The girls had known each other from youth.  Sue, orphaned at seven by her mother's death, was brought up by other members of her family in Amherst and elsewhere.  When Sue was away from Amherst, the two kept in regular touch through letters, and the bond was strengthened by their literary interests.  The tie was permanently established when Sue and Austin were married in 1856, and settled in the house next door built as a wedding gift by Austin's father.  Until the year of her death, Emily regularly sent poems to Sue, and the total of some two hundred seventy thus transmitted is vastly greater than that sent to others.  In 1861 Emily still turned to Sue for criticism and advice.  In that year she sent Sue a copy of her "Alabaster" poem, evidently with the intent of grooming it to some purpose, perhaps for the Republican.  The details of the letter-exchange are given in the notes to the poem.  It is clear that Emily could not get herself to take Sue's advice about letting the first stanza stand alone.  Her sensibilities were truer, as they would prove to be when at her importunity Higginson offered his criticism.  The attachment of the sisters continued through the years, but Emily never again sought advice from Sue.  She asked professional advice once again, and once only, when she wrote to Higginson  Her self-discovery grew out of those two experiences, and by the summer of 1862 she knew that she alone could chart her solitary voyage.  Meanwhile, the Republican published the earlier version of the "Alabaster" poem.  Higginson never specifically alluded to the version he received and she never mentioned the poem again.       The first letters to Higginson are breathlessly expectant.  By the time she came to answer his second note, she knew for a certainty what he thought of her publishing prospects: "I smile when you suggest I delay 'to publish' — that being foreign to my thought, as Firmament to Fin — If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her — if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase — and the approbation of my Dog, would forsake me — then — My Barefoot Rank is better —" There is a tenseness and gravity in her allusion to "fame," a word that in the years immediately following she probed deeply in xxvii

INTRODUCTION

some of her finest utterances.  She can accept his verdict because it comes from a final court and confirms her whole experience.  With the issue settled, and sensing Higginson's personal integrity, she set about to establish the student-preceptor relationship as a game she would play for the rest of her life.  Their relationship stabilized during that first year of correspondence into exchanges of amiable pleasantries, in which groove it moved until the end.  The luminous intensity of her quest disappeared, now that she had received her answer.       To be sure, an audience of one in a technical sense is a public, and she could henceforth send poems to Higginson and others.  But with the exception of those to Higginson and to Sue, the number of poems that thus gained a hearing is a minuscule fraction of the whole.  The Bowleses and Hollands and the Norcross cousins received respectively some two or three dozen over the years.  To the thirty or so other correspondents who were recipients of verses, for the most part she sent lines appropriate to special occasions.  There are poems of condolence for the bereaved, verses to speed a departing friend, thank-you notes to accompany the gift of a flower for those who have extended some favor.  But the great bulk of the poetry, including most of the important philosophical and love poems, were probably never seen by anyone except herself.  All who knew her were aware that she wrote poetry, but no one, not even her sister, knew how much.  Lavinia's amazement when she discovered the packets after Emily's death was genuine.       Emily Dickinson's preoccupation with the subject of fame is a striking characteristic of the poems written between 1862 and 1865, the years of full creativeness.  The dedication to her art was intensified during the first exchange of letters with Higginson during 1862, a dedication that led to renunciation of fame in her lifetime and, as the wellsprings of her creativeness dried up after 1865, to increasing seclusion.  There are four later instances of publication during her lifetime.  Two poems, "Some keep the sabbath going to church" and "Blazing in gold and quenching in purple," were published in 1864.  Possibly her consent was tacit, but it is unlikely that she wished them to appear.  In 1866 "A narrow fellow in the grass" was issued in xxviii

CREATING THE POEMS

the Republican, "robbed" of her, she informed Higginson in order to make clear to him that she herself did not wish it published.  The last to appear was "Success," in 1878.  Its publishing history is complex, and reveals the degree to which Emily Dickinson by then had become psychologically incapable of consenting to allow her verses to he printed.  The story deals principally with Helen Hunt Jackson.       Helen Fiske was the daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske, professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics in Amherst College from I 836 until his death eleven years later.  As small children the girls, who were of an age, had known each other, though their memory of the fact was vague when the acquaintance was renewed on a formal basis many years later.  After the death of Mrs. Fiske in 1844 Helen lived with relatives elsewhere, and though she maintained some Amherst ties, she had none during those years with Emily Dickinson.  At twenty-two she married Edward Bissell Hunt. When Colonel Higginson met her in Newport in 1866, she had been a widow for three years and had recently turned to writing as a way of regaining her balance after the loss, not only of her husband, but of her two children. It was probably Higginson who, sometime during the summer of 1868, contrived that the two Amherst authors should meet again. They certainly knew each other, however casually, in the very early seventies; but one was a restless traveler with a growing literary reputation, and the other a recluse poet whose few known verses were conveyed in occasional letters.  Helen Hunt visited in Amherst during the summer of 1870, but there is no record that they met.  The acquaintanceship was close enough by 1875 so that when Helen Hunt married William Sharpless Jackson, a Colorado businessman, Emily Dickinson sent her a note of congratulation.  From Helen Jackson's reply it is clear that she had seen a few of Emily Dickinson's poems. The supposition is that she had made copies of some that Colonel Higginson had shown her rather than that Emily Dickinson had sent them to her, for the relationship of the two women was still formal.  Helen Jackson concluded her letter:       I hope some day, somewhere I shall find you in a spot where we can know each other.  I wish very much that you would write to me xxix

INTRODUCTION

now and then, when it did not bore you.  I have a little manuscript volume with a few of your verses in it — and I read them very often — You are a great poet — and it is a wrong to the day you live in, that you will not sing aloud.  When you are what men call dead, you will he sorry you were so stingy.2       During the summer of 1876, Mrs. Jackson began her negotiations to secure a contribution from Emily Dickinson for a proposed anthology of verse.  In this year the well-known Boston publishing firm of Roberts Brothers decided to bring out a series of anonymous books which they called the "No Name Series." They were to be stories, as the circular advertised, written by American authors, "each a great unknown."  The first, announced for September, was Mercy Philbrick's Choice, and was widely reviewed when it appeared.  Some critics correctly guessed that Helen Hunt Jackson was the author, but neither she nor Thomas Niles, the publisher, confirmed or denied the conjecture.  Some fourteen "No Names" were issued, and Niles, encouraged by Mrs. Jackson, decided to bring out as a final volume an anthology of anonymous verse which would be contributed by American and English writers.  The advertisements hinted that the readers would encounter poems by Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Jean Ingelow, and "H. H."  Such an anthology would greatly extend the chance for speculation, and the volume, called A Masque of Poets, appeared in 1878.  It was one of the most profitable ventures Roberts Brothers ever undertook, and today, because it contains the first printing of poems by Thoreau, Lanier, and Dickinson, it is a collector's item.       During the summer of 1876, while the whole series was largely in the planning stage, Helen Jackson, vacationing in Princeton, Massachusetts, wrote this letter: My dear Miss Dickinson . . . I enclose to you a circular which may interest you.  When the volume of Verse is published in this series, I shall contribute to it: and I want to persuade you to.  Surely, in the shelter of such double anonymousness as that will be,       2 These unpublished letters from Helen Hunt Jackson are in the Dickinson Collection at Harvard. xxx

INTRODUCTION

you need not shrink. I want to see some of your verses in print.  Unless you forbid me, I will send some that I have. May I?- . . .3 Uncertain of her decision, or at least not wishing to estrange by a refusal, Emily Dickinson did not reply.  On October tenth Mrs. Jackson called on her in Amherst to plead in person.  Believing that Colonel Higginson could somehow resolve her dilemma, Emily immediately wrote him, enclosing the circular, and telling him that Mrs. Jackson "wished me to write for this — I told her I was unwilling, and she asked me why? — I said I was incapable and she seemed not to believe me and asked me not to decide for a few Days — meantime, she would write — She was so sweetly noble, I would regret to estrange her, and if you disapproved it, and thought me unfit, she would believe you —I am sorry to flee so often to my safest friend, but hope he permits me —" Under the circumstances one is not surprised that Higginson was misled and thought that Mrs. Jackson was asking for a story.  Accepting the role of intercessor for one so sweetly noble, her safest friend replied: ". . . It is always hard to judge for another of the bent of inclination or range of talent; but I should not have thought of advising you to write stories, as it would not seem to me to be in your line. Perhaps Mrs. Jackson thought that the change & variety might be good for you: but if you really feel a strong unwillingness to attempt it, I don't think she would mean to urge you. . ." Some eighteen months elapsed before Mrs. Jackson again pursued the subject. In the spring of 1878 she wrote from Colorado Springs: My dear friend . . . Would it be of any use to ask you once more for one or two of your poems, to come out in the volume of no name' poetry which is to he published before long by Roberts Bros.?  If you will give me permission I will copy them - sending them in my own handwriting — and promise never to tell any one, not even the publishers, whose the poems are.  Could you not bear this much of publicity?  Only you and I would recognize the poems.       3 Harvard College Library.       4 The first of the two Higginson letters here quoted is in the Boston Public Library; the second is in Harvard College Library. xxxi

INTRODUCTION

I wish very much you would do this — and I think you would have much amusement in seeing to whom the critics, those shrewd guessers, would ascribe your verses. That was in April, and the publication date for A Masque was but seven months away.  Mrs. Jackson could not take silence for a refusal, but she waited until October twenty-fifth before she wrote again, from a nearer vantage in Hartford, Connecticut.       My dear friend . . . Now — will you send me the poem?  No —will you let me send the "Success"—- which I know by heart - to Roberts Bros for the Masque of Poets? If you will, it will give me a great pleasure.  I ask it as a personal favour to myself — Can you refuse the only thing I perhaps shall ever ask at your hands? The fact that the volume was on sale three weeks later, and that it must already have been coming from the bindery at the time Mrs. Jackson wrote the last letter, strongly suggests that her plea for a "personal favour" was wrung from her because the volume was indeed already in print.  The letter written from Colorado Springs on December eighth seems to acknowledge some kind of consent, however vaguely it may have been given.  In any event the letter draws a longer breath:       My dear friend, I suppose by this time you have seen the Masque of Poets.  I hope you have not regretted giving me that choice bit of verse for it.  I was pleased to see that it had in a manner, a special place, being chosen to end the first part of the volume, — on the whole, the volume is a disappointment to me.  Still I think it has much interest for all literary people.  I confess myself quite unable to conjecture the authorship of most of the poems. . . Thomas Niles sent a copy of the volume to Emily Dickinson, who wrote to thank him for it.  He replied:       Dear Miss Dickinson You were entitled to a copy of "A Masque of Poets" without thanks, for your valuable contribution which for want of a known sponsor Mr Emerson has generally had to father. xxxii

CREATING THE POEMS

I wanted to send you a proof of your poem, wh. as you have doubtless perceived was slightly changed in phraseology . . . By this time Emily Dickinson had learned what to expect of the editorial blue pencil, but in this instance the changes must have been especially galling.  Five alterations had been introduced into the text.       The friendship with Helen Jackson remained cordial. Emily Dickinson occasionally sent her verses, and Mrs. Jackson continued to urge her friend to "sing aloud."  Though the letters of the Amherst poet became increasingly chatty and intimate, they remained to the last pointedly silent on the matter of publication.  On that issue her mind was settled. THE POET AT WORK       The manuscripts of nearly all the poems survive.  The text is always in one of three stages of composition: a fair copy, a semifinal draft, or a worksheet draft.  It sometimes has been set down in two or more variant fair copies, sent to different friends.  On occasion it is found in all three stages, thus affording the chance to watch the creative spirit in action.  Of the total extant holographs, two-thirds are fair copies, the finished drafts neatly transcribed in ink on sheets of letter stationery.  Some three hundred never progressed beyond the semifinal stage; they are the poems which, like many of the fair copies, are neatly assembled into packets, almost completed, but with suggested changes of one or more words or phrases carefully added in the margin or at the bottom.  Nearly two hundred survive in worksheet draft only.  They are the rough originals, always in pencil, and jotted down on paper scraps: on flaps or backs of envelopes, discarded letters, wrapping paper, edges of newspapers – in fact, on anything that lay conveniently at hand.       The packets, which Emily Dickinson assembled principally during 1858-1865, the years of her greatest productivity, are the storehouse where she gathered the fruits of her labors and upon which she drew from time to time when she wished to share the product with a friend. xxxiii

INTRODUCTION

It was therefore not important to her that all the poems in the packets should be fair copies.  She could create a fair copy from a semifinal draft when she transcribed a poem for some specific occasion.  Indeed, the fair copies themselves seem to have been considered alterable as long as they remained packet copies, and she not infrequently changed them when she selected them for transmission in a letter.  Thus she created many of her variants.       The largest part of the poetry survives in but a single draft, whatever the state of composition may be, and for that reason relatively few poems show her creative method.  Even so, these relatively few add up to a considerable total, and assembled they are an impressive body of documents in the manifold history of artistic generation.  For one thing, the several stages demonstrate the extent to which she adopted her own suggested changes.  They show a worksheet draft redacted into a semifinal one, and that into a fair copy which clearly is the text that satisfied her, since it is the one she incorporated without variants into several letters.  Finally they show her returning in later years to her early packet copies, attempting refinements.  Such she achieved on occasion. But more than once she turned a fair copy into a worksheet draft which she ultimately abandoned, thus leaving the poem in a particularly chaotic state. Above all, they show her filing her lines to gain that economy of expression which, when achieved, is the mark of her special genius.  Observe her at work.       In 1862 Emily Dickinson copied the semifinal draft of "One need not be a chamber to be haunted" (no. 670) into packet 13.  The suggested changes that follow the text she assembled in order at the end of the poem, with crosses at those points in the text where she wished to consider substitutions were she later to undertake a final draft.  In this instance she did just that.  Several months later she restudied her text and sent a redaction of the poem to Sue. From among the six possibilities for change she selected but one.  But she made four other substitutions not even suggested in the semifinal draft.5  She followed precisely the same method in "Give little anguish" (no. 310), written       5 Both autographs are reproduced in facsimile in Harvard Library Bulletin, VII (1953), between pages 260 and 261. xxxiv

CREATING THE POEMS

in the same year.  The semifinal draft offers one alternative, which is not adopted in the fair copy, although the latter incorporates substitute words not even suggested in the semifinal draft.  Here then are examples of semifinal packet copies which were redacted into fair copies, and thus her final choices are known.  Such redactions are not common.  But the instances cited above demonstrate the arbitrariness of her adoptions and substitutions, and they make clear that no pattern applicable to a "final" text of unfinished drafts can ever be established.  Semifinal drafts, unless she herself redacted them into fair copies, must always remain unfinished.  There are instances where she has underlined the suggested change as if to indicate that her choice was made.  But later fair copies of such poems are not consistent in adopting such apparent choices. (See for example "He preached upon breadth," no. 1207, and "No life can pompless pass away," no. 1626.) The mood of the moment played its part.       There are instances where two or more variant fair copies of a poem survive or are known to have been written, yet no one of the texts can be called "final." Such is true of "Blazing in gold" (no. 228).  The poem describes a sunset which in one version stoops as low as "the kitchen window"; in another, as low as an "oriel window"; in a third, as low as "the Otter's Window."  These copies were set down over a period of five years, from 1861 to 1866, and one text is apparently as valid as another.       The four copies of one of the later poems, "A dew sufficed itself" (no. 1437), are especially interesting examples of her creative process.  They are variants in the sense that they propose different word choices.  But since the earliest (about 1874) and the latest (1878) are identical in text, one may infer that intermediary texts even in fair copies had no finality so long as she was attempting to establish a reading.  The packet copy is semifinal in that it offers an alternative for the two final lines.  In the intermediary fair copies the alternative is adopted.  In the final 1878 fair copy it is rejected.  The full story of the substitutions and rejections is set forth in the notes to the text, where it will be observed that the earliest and latest versions are identical.  In this instance, the wheel has come full circle. xxxv

INTRODUCTION

Two worksheet stages of "March is the month of expectation" (no. 1404) led to the finished draft, all composed about 1877.  The second of the two began as a fair copy, but was converted into a worksheet by several alterations made in pencil.  Finally, in a fair copy to Sue, she made her choices, and the poem was finished.       There is one notable instance of a poem of three stanzas, almost final, converted back into a uniquely chaotic worksheet and left that way.  In 1862 she copied "Two butterflies went out at noon" (no. 533) into a packet.  It is finished except for the final line, for which an alternative reading is suggested.  Some sixteen years later, to judge by the handwriting, she attempted a redaction of it. On another sheet of paper she began the poem anew but, like the butterfly itself, the poet too was lost.  The text is rare in the degree of its complications, but it is a fascinating document of poetic creativeness in travail.  The worksheet draft of "Crisis is sweet" (no. 1416), written about 1877, is almost as complicated and appears never to have been finished.  One other such has moving power even as it stands. About 1885, one imagines from the evidence of handwriting, she set down an unfinished draft of "Extol thee — could I — then I will" (no. 1643).  It is futile to speculate how it might have been shaped if it had been finished.  It deserves to be known even as it stands.       Although these particular drafts seem never to have resulted in finished poems, there is ample evidence that absence of a fair copy does not mean the poem never progressed beyond the worksheet stage.  Emily Dickinson was accustomed to send copies of her poems to friends, often written for special occasions.  Such poems among the published letters in some instances are lost, but the worksheet drafts from which the fair copies were redacted survive.  Thus the number of poems originally completed was somewhat greater than the number of extant worksheet drafts would indicate.       No poet in the language has achieved fulfillment by way of the single quatrain with greater sureness than Emily Dickinson.  One of her greatest she incorporated into a letter which she wrote Colonel Higginson in mid-June 1877 (no. 1393): xxxvi

CREATING THE POEMS

Lay this Laurel on the One Too intrinsic for Renown - Laurel — vail your deathless tree — Him you chasten, that is He!       The lines were written in memory of her father who had died three years before.  Their immediate source of inspiration was a seven-stanza Civil War elegy which Higginson had contributed to Scribner's Monthly in the month of her father's death and which, because of the association she had given it, she was rereading.6  The poem survives in two earlier drafts, one a worksheet and the other a fair copy, but both consisting of two quatrains.  It is not possible to know whether she intended the poem finally to stand as two stanzas or one.  She often used but one stanza of a two-stanza poem when she incorporated verses in her letters.  But there is good reason to conjecture, in the light of the whole process by which the quatrain was inspired and transmitted to Higginson, that she intended it to stand as the full realization of her intent.       A final word about the creative process.  One should not gather the impression that all poems first existed in rough drafts which were laboriously converted into fair copies.  There are several instances of worksheet drafts - that is, poems jotted down in pencil on paper scraps – which stand finished.  The inspiration and the act of generation were one and complete.  The deservedly famous "Humming-bird" (no. 1463) was evidently so created.  It is one of the later poems, written about 1879.  It survives in five holographs; a sixth, known to have been made, is now lost. All six are identical in text.  All were sent to friends, thus indicating the assurance she felt about its quality. Mrs. Todd is quoted as saying that in one copy which Emily Dickinson sent her, the second line was written at the bottom of the page: "with a delusive, dissembling, dissolving, renewing wheel."  Obviously whatever hesitation she had about a final choice came after the poem was finished.  It must have been fleeting too, for none of the suggested       6 For another poem, also Sent to Higginson, which passed through an interesting worksheet stage, see "The last of summer is delight" (no. 1353). xxxvii

INTRODUCTION

changes prevailed.  The absence of variants in the six fair copies, the exuberance of tone, the ear's absolute pitch, the assurance of the writer in her achievement – all these factors confirm the impression that the poem was spontaneously conceived.  It is of the fellowship of life which springs fully armed from the brow of Jove. xxviii

EDITING THE POEMS 1890-1945

Shortly after Emily Dickinson's death on May fifteenth, 1886, her sister Lavinia discovered a locked box in which Emily had placed her poems.7 Lavinia's amazement seems to have been genuine.  Though the sisters had lived intimately together under the same roof all their lives, and though Lavinia had always been aware that her sister wrote poems, she had not the faintest concept of the great number of them.  The story of Lavinia's willingness to spare them because she found no instructions specifying that they be destroyed, and her search for an editor and a publisher to give them to the world has already been told in some detail.8       Lavinia first consulted the two people most interested in Emily's poetry, her sister-in-law Susan Dickinson, and Mrs. Todd. David Peck Todd, a graduate of Amherst College in 1875, returned to Amherst with his young bride in 1881 as director of the college observatory and soon became professor of Astronomy and Navigation.  These were the months shortly before Mrs. Edward Dickinson's death, when neighbors were especially thoughtful.  Mrs. Todd endeared herself to Emily and Lavinia by small but understanding attentions, in return for which Emily sent Mrs. Todd copies of her poems.  At first approach neither Susan Dickinson nor Mrs. Todd felt qualified for the editorial task which they both were hesitant to undertake.  Mrs. Todd says of Lavinia's discovery: "She showed me the manuscripts and there were over sixty little 'volumes,' each composed of four or       7 "I found, (the week after her death) a box (locked) containing 7 hundred wonderful poems, carefully copied -" - Letter from Lavinia to Mrs. C. S. Mack, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 17 February 1991 (quoted by permission of Mr. Julian E. Mack).       8 In Ancestors' Brocades (New York: Harper,by Millicent Todd Bingham. The account of the editing by Mabel Loomis Todd as there presented by her daughter is frankly partisan, but it is documented from Mrs. Todd's diaries and from exchanges of letters between Mrs. Todd and her co-editor T. W. Higginson, and letters to and from the publisher, Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers.  It is therefore source material to which the following summary is indebted. xxxix

INTRODUCTION

five sheets of note paper tied together with twine.  In this box she discovered eight or nine hundred poems tied up in this way."       Whether Lavinia sought their aid simultaneously in those first weeks is not clear.  She went impulsively from one house to the other, and probably was vague and very determined.  Two things are certain.  All the packets were taken to Sue during the summer of 1886 and remained with her well into the winter. During that time Lavinia was beseeching Susan to make a selection from them for publication.  Sue mulled over the matter and discussed the poems with friends.  Vinnie was frantic that Sue should need more time to reach a decision and sought Mrs. Todd's help.  Mrs. Todd obviously could do nothing as long as Sue had the manuscripts.  Pressed for a decision that winter, Sue, perhaps unable to make up her mind, and certainly reacting to old irritations which this new pressure of Vinnie's aggravated, allowed Vinnie to recover the manuscripts without in fact having come to an answer.  By doing so she at least was freeing herself from Vinnie's importunity.       Evidently in February 1887 Lavinia went to Mrs. Todd's house one evening, presumably with the poems in her hands.  She pleaded with Mrs. Todd to take on the labor.  Both Professor and Mrs. Todd seem to have been persuaded that Susan Dickinson had no real intention of undertaking the work, and then and there Mrs. Todd promised Lavinia that she would attempt it.  Since both the Todds were leaving Amherst in March for Japan, whither Professor Todd was conducting an astronomical expedition, Mrs. Todd could not expect to begin the work until their return.  Plans matured in due course, and Mrs. Todd commenced the task of transcribing the poems immediately upon her arrival home in November 1887.  Professor Todd lent assistance to his wife, especially at the start.  He had the training in precision that prompted him, as soon as the packets and the envelopes of loose sheets and scraps were delivered to them, to begin first of all by numbering them.  Lavinia did not bring all the manuscripts at once; she doled them out in batches which Mrs. Todd undertook to return as soon as she completed her transcriptions. With a blue 9 Ancestors' Brocades, 17. xl

EDITING THE POEMS

pencil Professor Todd placed a number at the top of the first page of each packet and, as they later came into his house, on the envelopes containing the remaining manuscripts. His sequence goes 1 through 40, 80 through 110.  A tabulation shows that numbers 1-40, 80-83 are all threaded packets, that numbers 84-98 are packets of loose sheets prepared as if for threading.  Beyond that point the grouping is miscellaneous, with no discoverable sequence except as the arrangements reflect Mrs. Todd's effort to produce a semblance of order among manuscripts that had in fact no order at all.  Mrs. Todd began copying systematically, starting with the poems in the packet that her husband had numbered one.  In due course she progressed through packet number 40 - a total of 665 poems. These from time to time as she completed transcriptions, she returned to Lavinia, in whose possession they remained until they were inherited by her heirs.  Packets numbered 8o through 98, and the remaining worksheet drafts and scraps, continued to rest among the papers in Mrs. Todd's possession until her death in 1934, and still remain with them.       There is no ready explanation why Professor Todd left a gap in his numbers, stopping at 40 and beginning again at 80.  The record book survives wherein Mrs. Todd listed the first lines of all poems she knew about, except the worksheet drafts which comprise envelopes 99-110.  This list, together with the poems in the final twelve envelopes, establishes the total of all poems known to have been among Emily Dickinson's papers at the time of her death, In the left-hand margin David Todd has penciled the number of the packet wherein the poem might be found.  His numbers set down in the record book exactly correspond with the evidence of the packets: they range from 1 to 40, and from 80 to 98.  They skip 41 through 79.  The packet numbering was done solely by Professor Todd.  He undertook it in the autumn of 1887 at the time Mrs. Todd began her labors of transcribing, and he continued intermittently as fresh batches of manuscripts were placed in his wife's hands by Lavinia Dickinson. Since numbers 1-40 were all ultimately returned, and numbers 80 and upward were not, one suspects that the break in numbering represents a lapse in memory.  There is not a shred of evidence that he or Mrs. xli

INTRODUCTION

Todd or anyone else so much as suspected the existence of further packets. Mrs. Todd's statement already quoted that Lavinia's box of threaded "volumes" contained "eight or nine hundred poems tied up in this way" would seem to confirm the existence of no more.  The threaded packets, numbered 1-40, 80-83, contain exactly 879 poems.       There can be no assurance that the packets through number 83 – the last to be threaded – are in fact today grouped as Emily Dickinson originally assembled them.  They have now all been examined with care, and some corrections within the packets effected.  There are instances of two sets of thread holes in certain sheets, one set exactly corresponding with the thread holes of the sheets in the packets wherein they are now placed, the other set corresponding with the thread holes of another packet in which they may once have been placed.  Since the packets have passed through many hands during the past sixty-nine years, there can be no certainty about the reasons for such a transfer.  Some alteration conceivably may have been made by Emily Dickinson herself.