Resources and Abbreviations

Resources
There are tons of resources about Dickinson, her life, her work, her impact. For a more capacious list, please consult the “Bibliography” at Dickinson Electronic Archive 2 (DEA). We mention only a few to get you started.

Primary Sources:
Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) http://www.edickinson.org/
This is an invaluable resource for accessing Dickinson’s manuscripts. It makes high-resolution images of Dickinson’s surviving manuscripts held in multiple libraries and archives available in open access. The present version includes images for the poems identified in The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by R. W. Franklin (Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998), and allows you to search by poem number, first line or words, acting as a virtual concordance to the poems.
The Poems of Emily Dickinson:  Reading Edition, edited by R.W. Franklin, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. This one volume edition superseded Thomas Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) and is very handy.
Emily Dickinson’s Poems : As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. This recent edition presents Dickinson’s poems in the order and versions of the Fascicles and is a good way to experience how the poet organized and arranged her poems.

Digital Resources:
• Dickinson Electronic Archive (DEA 1 and DEA 2 )
The second website is an expanded version of the first and we use only that one without the number. DEA “is a scholarly resource showcasing the possibility of interdisciplinary and collaborative research and exploring the potential of the digital environment to reveal new interpretive material, cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts.” It is devoted to the study of Emily Dickinson, her writing practices, writings directly influencing her work, and critical and creative writings generated by her work. DEA contains archives of manuscripts by Dickinson and members of her circle, as well as critical essays and teaching resources.
The Emily Dickinson’s Lexicon, ed. by Cynthia Hallen. This website helps illuminate Dickinson’s word choice by examining the meanings recorded in Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1844 printing of 1841 ed.), which she used throughout her writing life, and also listing the usages of words in Emily Dickinson’s writings. Indispensable. Sign in for the best access.
The Emily Dickinson Museum.  Home of Emily Dickinson, a National Historic Landmark owned by the Trustees of Amherst College, and well worth a visit. This web site also includes information about the Evergreens, home of Susan and Austin Dickinson, as well as numerous other Dickinson-related topics and sites in Amherst. A good introduction.

Biographies
• Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Random House, 2001
• Leyda, Jay. The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1960. reprinted by Archon Books, 1970.
• Sewall, Richard B. The Life of Emily Dickinson. 2 Volumes. New York: Farrar, Streaus and Giroux, 1974.
• Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. Emily Dickinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Critical Works
• Loeffelholz, Mary. The Value of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge UP, 2016. [concentrates on the poems as both literary texts and material objects]
•Miller, Cristanne. Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in The Nineteenth Century. Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P, 2012.  [treats Dickinson as part of her historical moment, looks at publication issue; meter]
• Richards, Eliza. Emily Dickinson in Context. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. [short essays by the best of Dickinson scholars]
• Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. [reads poems closely to show how forms makes the meaning amd how form and content work together]
• Martin, Wendy. All Things Dickinson: An Encyclopedia of Emily Dickinson’s World [online version is helpful.]
• Leiter, Sharon. Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2007. [ synthesizes many critical approaches and offers helpful  critical readings of the poems]

Fun Stuff:
Amherst, A Novel, by William Nicholson
• Longsworth, Polly. Austin & Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1984. [letters between Austin and Mabel that details their 12 year affair—sizzling!]
A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, by Jerome Charyn [definitely the work of a “fan.”]

More Abbreviations

Poems will be identified by their number in Franklin’s edition by F and in Johnson’s edition by J. Letters will be identifies by L.

Each blog post will be identified by the month and the week. Thus, the week of January 1-7 will be labeled 1:1, the next week 1:2 and so forth.