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Telling it slant

Emily Dickinson in the world
by
March 2025, no. 473

The Letters of Emily Dickinson by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell

Harvard University Press, US$49.95 hb, 965 pp

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Telling it slant

Emily Dickinson in the world
by
March 2025, no. 473

In his introduction to The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), Thomas H. Johnson asserted that Dickinson ‘did not live in history and held no view of it, past or current’ and that her ‘rejection of society … shows itself to have been total, not only physically but psychically’. This paternalistic miscasting of Dickinson as the fey ‘Myth’ of Amherst, clad in her snow-white dress, began in the poet’s own lifetime (1830-86) and persisted well into the twentieth century. Ironically, Dickinson was aware of her inadvertent mystique, writing to her cousin, ‘Won’t you tell “the public” that at present I wear a brown dress with a cape if possible browner, and carry a parasol of the same!’

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell

Harvard University Press, US$49.95 hb, 965 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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