The Start of the Year at the White Heat
Perhaps one of the most poignant issues for Dickinson during this immensely productive year was the American Civil War, which is why we begin by exploring its implications for her work. The popular myth of Dickinson as a recluse perpetuated the idea that she was a poet apart from the world and its turmoil, but her connections with the Civil War in her writing reveal this damaging assumption to be false.
The news for the week of January 1-7 heavily centered on the War, still fairly new in the nation’s mind as the second anniversary quickly approached in April 1862.