Emily Dickinson: A Private Publisher
By MaryClare Goller

Background

In contemporary terms, Emily Dickinson was an unpublished poet during her life and for many years afterward. She did not have works in "print" while a living poet. She was not a secret poet -- one who writes without others knowing. Rather, she was a poet in seclusion. Upon her death her sister found forty bound-hand sewn-volumes or fascicles of poetry. On the average each volume contained twenty poems. This collection of work was in addition to the hundreds of poems inserted into the text of various pieces of correspondence she sent to family, friends and literary contemporaries during her life. Although her work went publicly unpublished, excluding pieces that were printed anonymously or without her permission, a small circle of friends and other contacts read her poetry. Does this make her a poet that published privately? In total Emily Dickinson's poetry comprised the forty fascicles of poems, 98 unbound sheets and 700 to 800 manuscripts of poems on varying pieces of paper. To date Emily Dickinson wrote 1,789 individual poems. It was not until 1981 that R.W. Franklin edited a three-volume set of poetry that reflected the order and accuracy that Dickinson herself left the poems in upon her death.

Intentions of Emily Dickinson

Did Emily Dickinson have a preference for the process of self-editing and self-publication she exercised over that of the era's established publishing firms? Was it her intention in 1863 to publicly publish and when she did not receive the affirmation to do so conceded to self-publishing or really non-publishing? (Johnson xxiv). Did she recognize that editing would mar, if not, erase the original intention and message of her poems and therefore thought non-publication, except to a close circle of friends, would be the only satisfactory realm of publication? Answers to these questions and others can be pursued, yet perhaps not found. What does exist for analysis is the manner and process of Dickinson's personal writing, editing and self-publishing via letters and hand-made volumes. One can attempt to perceive the process the poet exercised in regard to idea generation, composition development and alteration, and finally -- when appropriate -- final form status of individual and various groupings of poems.

The Fascicles

If Emily Dickinson never -- even for a short time -- held an interest in publication, in what manner can the forty hand-bound fascicles be explained? The fascicles are volumes of stationery sheets folded to make two leaves per sheet. Each folded sheet was stacked on top of, not inserted within, another folded sheet. Approximately eight leaves comprise each booklet or fascicle. The sheets were stab-bound with string. No title page, table of contents or other features were included. Each poem within the fascicle was written in ink. Once poems were entered into fascicle from earlier manuscripts were destroyed (Franklin, The Manuscript, xii). Dickinson's early habit of destroying manuscripts and copying in ink a final version of a poem into a fascicle lends itself to the notion that Emily considered the booklets privately published texts. Of further interest is Emerson's message in an 1840 essay printed in The Dial encouraging all poets of that time to "portfolio" their work (Cameron, 8). Might Dickinson have been influenced by this significant literary figure? Scholars Cameron and Franklin do not appear to agree on Emily Dickinson's motivation to produce the fascicles, neither proposes definitive explanations, but both provide research and theory to further illuminate students of Dickinson.

Franklin suggests that the fascicles are a "systematic and comprehensive record of completed poems" (The Manuscript, x). Compared to the manner Dickinson left a sum of about 700 poems at the end of her life, the fascicles are organized and orderly. Poems included within a fascicle are not necessarily poems of the same time frame. Another scholar of Emily Dickinson's work, Sharon Cameron, asks, "what if the scenes and subjects can be said to unfold between and among the poems as well as within?" (Cameron, 4). Cameron states "assertions about Dickinson's intentions with respect to the fascicles are speculative" (7). Franklin considers Dickinson's taking of sheets from varying years to bind as not an order directed task, but perhaps as a task to give order (14). Cameron views the selection of various poems from various years as a step providing a "high degree" of order and what is being directed or determined is "the preparation of an entity" (14). Fascicle production is viewed as stopping around 1865. It is not until 1981 when Franklin makes one of the most important contributions to the study of Emily Dickinson and her work by publishing a three volume set of facsimiles of Dickinson's fascicles in their original order. Thus readers can view the order she determined and designed by hand between the years 1860 and 1865.

Brief Publication History

One hundred and ninety five years elapsed between Emily Dickinson's death and the publication of The Manuscripts Books of Emily Dickinson -- Franklin's facsimiles of Dickinson's fascicles. What occurred during that time in respect to editing and publishing of Dickinson's poems? Beginning the following year Emily's sister, Lavinia, asked Susan H. Dickinson and then Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd, a neighbor and close friend, to take on the task of editing in preparation for publishing. The sheer volume of the poet's work was overwhelming indeed. On the original manuscripts notations can be found from these original editors. To reproduce, in printed form, a similar volume of poetry, with editors' tendencies toward uniformity of written and printed conventions would prove to yield frequently inaccurate versions of the poet's work.

Up until 1945 the published volumes of poems presented a varying quantity of poems and in differing degrees of accuracy. The last of the family line of Mrs. Todd, Millicent Todd Bingham, published a volume titled Bolts of Melody in 1945. Bolts of Melody featured over 600 previously unpublished poems in very accurate renditions (Franklin, The Editing, 116). Franklin asserts that Dickinson's poems "resist translation into the conventions of print" yet through careful examination of the original fascicles and interpretation of Dickinson's handwriting style as well as the handwriting style of the day, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition and The Manuscripts Books present the most accurate renderings of Dickinson's poetry to date (The Manuscript, ix).

Correspondence of Emily Dickinson

During Emily Dickinson's lifetime she wrote letters that were sent to over 90 correspondents. Many people, both men and women of the mid to late 1800's were voluminous letter writers. However, Emily Dickinson inserted poetry into letters and eventually boundaries between letter and poetry diminished, if not disappeared. Thomas Johnson said that correspondence from the 1860's "both in style and rhythm begin to take on qualities that are so nearly the quality of her poems as on occasion to leave the reader in doubt where the letter leaves off and the poem begins" (Grabher, 164). Agnieszka Salska, in "Dickinson's Letters", The Emily Dickinson Handbook, presents Mark Van Doren's words to cite that scholarship extends the idea that the letters and poems "are from the same source" (Grabher, 165).

Imbedding poetic structure and principals within her letters Emily publicized her poetic ideals and poems themselves to her network of correspondents. An extensive collection of letters as part of one's collected literary writings correlate with a standard of the time. Within her contemporaries' -- Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne or Longfellow -- collected works, volumes of letters are found that mark a Victorian cultural and literary phenomenon (Grabher 165). Salska writes, "writing letters, the artist Dickinson was not so much making a virtue out of necessity as, quite radically and experimentally, putting to her own use a pervasive cultural habit" (166). Emily Dickinson's letters then match a publication norm of the era and go beyond its aims -- literary correspondence that was both personally satisfying and professionally or more aptly, artistically purposeful.

A most influential and puzzling letter within the study of Dickinson is her 1863 letter to Thomas Higginson. This initial letter differs from the many Emily wrote up until that point because Higginson was not personally known to her. He was, however, professionally well established as a literary critic. When examining the text of the letter the idea that Dickinson was investigating publication worthiness of her poetry is brought under consideration:

"Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?

The Mind is so near itself - it cannot see, distinctly - and I have none to ask-…

If I make the mistake…Sir - tell me what is true?

That you would not betray me - it is needless to ask - since Honor is it's own pawn--" (Johnson, 171).

"Thank you for the surgery -- it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others -- as you ask -- though they might not differ--

While my thought is undressed-I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown -- they look alike, and numb" (Johnson 172).

Poetry on the Page:
Handwriting, Syntax & Punctuation's Impact on Printing

"Printing is itself a misrepresentation of the texts as they exist in manuscript," writes Franklin (The Editing, 117). To allow her poetry into "print" Dickinson first would have had to subject the poems to editors' scrutiny -- many of who yielded to conventional verse structure and syntax. Secondly, the page would never take on the same look in printed form. A page of Dickinson's poetry was visual and literary. Franklin continues to say that, "though this is a problem of all printing, it is more acute with the Dickinson texts, in which the difficulties of rendering the poems in print are compounded by the poet's handwriting and individual mode of punctuation" (117). Dickinson's unconventional use of capitalization and punctuation created discord throughout publication history of her work. Franklin highlights the fact that upon becoming familiar with the manuscripts the punctuation and capitalization that is of much curiosity may be a habit of handwriting, yet not a consistent one. Franklin further points out that if Dickinson wanted to remove unconventional capitals upon copying over into fascicles she had the option to change -- yet did not (120).

In regard to punctuation Higginson, her long term correspondent and first publisher, makes a case that Emily "followed the Old English and present German method of thus distinguishing every noun substantive" (Franklin, The Editing, 118). This has been found to be inaccurate. Scanning multiple Dickinson poems will show that not every noun is capitalized. Mrs. Todd provided a simple analysis, that being, "all important words began with capitials" (Franklin, The Editing, 118). A few critics view the unconventional notationsdashes and capitals -- as a means to "direct the reading of the verse" as in -- music. Theodora Ward, associate editor of the first Johnson volume of poetry, notes that the marks found in poems were also found in letters. Ward asserts that Dickinson would not have corresponded to a literary critic, Higginson, asking for advice and simultaneously directed how her letter was to be read (Franklin, The Editing, 120). This connection of unity of poem and letter is addressed with the concept of "letter-poems". Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith in offer scholarship in regard to the idea of letter-poems. Susan Dickinson was the recipient of the majority of this form of Dickinson's writing. Many of letter-poems to Susan were written on smaller sheets of stationary, in pencil, and folds show the note could have fit into a pocket of a dress encouraging highly frequent delivery by hand. In respect to handwriting and notations, Franklin maintains that handwriting of the day, especially for females was prone to capitalization with free and liberal use of dashes. Letters from Dickinson's correspondents and other sources support this (The Editing, 124).

Fame

A poet's (or artist's) work reveals who they are: their style, themes, view points, philosophies. If a poet, writer or artist has control over the process of publication, then published works will reveal identity and purpose, similar to privately created works. Regardless of authenticity of publication, publishing directs a poet's or artist's fame. In 1865 Dickinson composed these lines:

Fame is the tint that Scholars leave
Opon their Setting Names-
The Iris not of Occident
That disappears as comes-
--Emily Dickinson, 1865 (Franklin, The Poems, #968)

Lest you meet my Snake and suppose I deceive it was robbed of me -- defeated too of the third line by the punctuation. The third and fourth were one -- I had told you I did not print -- I feared you might think me ostensible. (Johnson, Selected Letters 192)

Fame is a bee.
It has a song-
It has a sting-
Ah, too, it has a wing.
-Emily Dickinson, Undated, (Franklin, The Poems, #1788)

American poet, Adrienne Rich, composed a poem recognizing Dickinson's struggle to preserve her poetic integrity and referring to her earliest editorial and publication experiences. Lines from the last two stanzas highlight Dickinson's silence as a means of control:

Till the air buzzing with spoiled language
sang in your ears
of Perjury

and in your half-cracked way you chose
silence for entertainment,
chose to have it out at last
on your own premises.

"Fame's Boys and Girls, who never die/And are too seldom born" wrote Dickinson in 1865. Even if fame was not an aim of Dickinson, she seemed to know it would be a result of publication. Refusal to publish, instead could bear "Immortality". A poet whose theme of death is highly prevalent among her work certainly yields immortality as another theme. In the second stanza of poem #319, she writes of both ideas:

My Splendors, are Menagerie-
But their Competeless Show
Will entertain the Centuries
When I, am long ago,
An Island in dishonored Grass-
Whom none but Daises, know.
-Emily Dickinson, 1862, (Franklin, The Poems, #319)

Works Cited

Cameron, Sharon. Choosing Not Choosing: Dickinson's Fascicles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Cameron, Sharon. "Amplified Contexts". The Emily Dickinson Handbook. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Franklin, R.W. The Editing of Emily Dickinson: A Reconsideration. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

_______. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Cambridge,MA: The Belknap Press, 1998.

_______. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1981.

Grabher, Gudrun, Roland Hagenbuchle, and Christine Miller, editors. The Emily Dickinson Handbook. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Hart, Ellen Louise and Martha Nell Smith. Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 1998.

Johnson, Thomas. Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1958.