Emily Dickinson was unpublished and virtually unknown in her own lifetime.*
Like many modern introverts, Dickinson was most comfortable communicating through the medium of the written word. The famous recluse was a frequent correspondent, and sent many letters to her friends, often including poems with her communications.
Most of Dickinson’s best-known poems are from her earlier work. These pieces were carefully copied in her best handwriting onto tidy sheets of folded stationery, and hand-bound with string. The booklets she made in this manner are described as “fascicles” by Dickinson scholars. Of the nearly 1,800 surviving Dickinson poems, more than 1,000 were copied and hand-bound into fascicles. Of these poems, the vast majority appear to have been composed or transcribed between about 1858 and 1865, when the poet was in her late twenties and early thirties.
After 1865, Dickinson abruptly ceased her previously prodigious output, and stopped copying her work into bound fascicles. The reason is not immediately clear. We do know that her beloved dog died, and a household servant departed and was not replaced. Perhaps she fell into an episode of depression, and felt overwhelmed, as often happens to creative types. Perhaps she despaired of getting her work formally published: possibly because it was too personal, or possibly due to the sexism of the nineteenth-century printing industry, or possibly for other complex family or personal dynamics. This gets into the realm of speculation. Regardless, after having written more than 900 poems in the four years leading up to 1865, she wrote only 65 poems in the following six years, and bound none of them into fascicles. She resumed writing poems at a much slower pace after about 1871, but was much less concerned with getting these later pieces into a finished final state, and left most of them in loose-leaf form, without making final decisions regarding alternate wording. To the outside observer, looking back in time, it appears as though Emily Dickinson despaired that her poetry would ever be important to anyone other than herself or perhaps a small circle of close friends. Her own family seems to have been unaware of her fascicles containing hundreds of brilliant poems, until they were discovered among her belongings after her death.
And yet, Emily Dickinson is now well-beloved for such memorable poems as “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” She is now widely regarded as one of the most important poets of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest American poets of all time.
Don’t give up. Never give up.
Notes
*Although ten of Dickinson’s poems were printed in various newspapers during her lifetime, those were published anonymously, with no attribution, and without her permission.
Sources
Emily Dickinson, author; Cristanne Miller, editor, introduction and notes. (2016). Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press).
Emily Dickinson Museum. (retrieved 10-27-2020). The Publication Question. Retrieved from https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/the-poet-at-work/the-publication-question/
Wikipedia. (retrieved 10-27-2020). Emily Dickinson. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson.
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