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1890: Poetry of
Emily Dickinson
Author/Editor:
Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson were first published in 1890 and are still in print today. Many library resources, like the Concise Dictionary of American Literature, provide insight into the life and work of Dickinson.
The Editor’s Commentary states, “This selection from her poems is published to meet the desire of her personal friends, and especially of her surviving sister. It is believed that the thoughtful reader will find in these pages a quality more suggestive of the poetry of William Blake than of anything to be elsewhere found – flashes of wholly original and profound insight into nature and life; words and phrases exhibiting an extraordinary vividness of descriptive and imaginative power, yet often set in a seemingly whimsical or even rugged frame.” (p.3)
Prelude is the first poem in the book:
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, –
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me?