Reading Emily Dickinson's Letters
312 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
12
Paperback
Release Date:25 Jan 2011
ISBN:9781558499010
Reading Emily Dickinson's Letters
Critical Essays
University of Massachusetts Press
Emily Dickinson, who regarded a letter as "a joy of Earth," was herself a gifted epistolary artist—cryptic and allusive in style, dazzling in verbal effects, and sensitively attuned to the recipients of her many letters. In this volume, distinguished literary scholars focus intensively on Dickinson's letter-writing and what her letters reveal about her poetics, her personal associations, and her self-awareness as a writer.
Although Dickinson's letters have provided invaluable perspective for biographers and lovers of poetry since Mabel Loomis Todd published the first selection in 1894, today's scholarly climate opens potential for fresh insights drawn from new theoretical approaches, informed cultural contextualizations, and rigorous examination of manuscript evidence. Essays in this collection explore ways that Emily Dickinson adapted nineteenth-century epistolary conventions of women's culture, as well as how she directed her writing to particular readers, providing subtly tactful guidance to ways of approaching her poetics.
Close examination of her letters reveals the conscious artistry of Dickinson's writing, from her auditory effects to her experiments with form and tone. Her well-known correspondences with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Susan Dickinson, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Otis Phillips Lord are examined here, but so too are previously neglected family communications with her aunt Kate Sweetser and cousin Eugenia Montague. Contributors find in these various letters evidence of Dickinson's enthusiastic participation in a sort of epistolary book club involving multiple friends, as well as her loving attentiveness to individuals in times of both suffering and joy. These inquiries highlight her thoughts on love, marriage, gender roles, art, and death, while unraveling mysteries ranging from legal discourse to Etruscan smiles.
In addition to a foreword by Marietta Messmer, the volume includes essays by Paul Crumbley, Karen Dandurand, Jane Donahue Eberwein, Judith Farr, James Guthrie, Ellen Louise Hart, Eleanor Heginbotham, Cindy MacKenzie, Martha Nell Smith, and Stephanie Tingley.
Although Dickinson's letters have provided invaluable perspective for biographers and lovers of poetry since Mabel Loomis Todd published the first selection in 1894, today's scholarly climate opens potential for fresh insights drawn from new theoretical approaches, informed cultural contextualizations, and rigorous examination of manuscript evidence. Essays in this collection explore ways that Emily Dickinson adapted nineteenth-century epistolary conventions of women's culture, as well as how she directed her writing to particular readers, providing subtly tactful guidance to ways of approaching her poetics.
Close examination of her letters reveals the conscious artistry of Dickinson's writing, from her auditory effects to her experiments with form and tone. Her well-known correspondences with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Susan Dickinson, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Otis Phillips Lord are examined here, but so too are previously neglected family communications with her aunt Kate Sweetser and cousin Eugenia Montague. Contributors find in these various letters evidence of Dickinson's enthusiastic participation in a sort of epistolary book club involving multiple friends, as well as her loving attentiveness to individuals in times of both suffering and joy. These inquiries highlight her thoughts on love, marriage, gender roles, art, and death, while unraveling mysteries ranging from legal discourse to Etruscan smiles.
In addition to a foreword by Marietta Messmer, the volume includes essays by Paul Crumbley, Karen Dandurand, Jane Donahue Eberwein, Judith Farr, James Guthrie, Ellen Louise Hart, Eleanor Heginbotham, Cindy MacKenzie, Martha Nell Smith, and Stephanie Tingley.
It is high time for renewed large-scale attention to Dickinson's letters and this volume provides a marvelously up-to-date range of critical, theoretical, and pragmatic responses to the personal, social, cultural, and poetic functions of her letter-writing. The contributors include many of the most highly respected Dickinson scholars, and many of the essays will be useful for the classroom as well as for scholars.'—Cristanne Miller, author of Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar
'The first study to focus exclusively on Dickinson's correspondence, this collection reexamines the importance of the letters in their historical and cultural contexts. . . . All the essays are illuminating, and most are beautifully written and meticulously researched. . . . Highly recommended.'—Choice
'This is the first collection of scholarly inquiry to be devoted exlusively to the correspondence. . . . The collection offers a look at the current trends in Dickinson scholarship and does not shy away from the more controversial areas that still trigger division among readers who love this poet and all of her work. . . . The essays are written by some of the most prominent academics working in Dickinson scholarship, the material is accessible to the educated lay reader. Reading Emily Dickinson's Letters is a treasure not only for those who wish to learn more about the poet but also for those whose interest is in nineteenth-century domestic life.'—Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin
'Informative and thoughtful collection of essays.'—The New England Quarterly
'These essays examine the letters as examples of 19th-century gift culture, domestic metaphor, condolence messages, shared views on books and literature, commentary on women's roles, veiled eroticism, and nuanced use of emphasis and alliteration.'—C&RL News
'Reading Emily Dickenson's Letters embraces the 'mutual plum' notion. It not only addresses academic and general audiences alike, offering a superb readability, but its essays speak to each other. The social exchange that must have led to this book, and informed its contents, mirrors its portait of Dickinson with echoes in her voice.'—The Emily Dickinson Journal
'This volume should be extremely instructive to a new generation that believes communications should be limited to 140 characters typed with their thumbs.'—History Wire
Jane Donahue Eberwein is author of Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation and editor of An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia. Cindy MacKenzie is author of A Concordance to the Letters of Emily Dickinson and coeditor of Wider than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson
