The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Only eleven of Emily Dickinson-s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally -edited- versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately repres Only eleven of Emily Dickinson-s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumously published collections-some of them featuring liberally -edited- versions of the poems-did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson-s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations.

Not until the 1955 publication of , a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson-s extraordinary poetic genius. This book, a distillation of the three-volume , brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.