THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, INCLUDING VARIANT READINGS CRITICALLY COMPARED WITH ALL KNOWN MANUSCRIPTS. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, nd. [A single-volume reprint of the original 1955 3-vol. edition]. ISBN 0-674-67601-7 HBK.

Prior to the appearance of Johnson's great variorum edition of Emily Dickinson in 1955, an edition which was the first to offer readers accurate texts of her complete poems, it was not possible to arrive at a just estimation of her tremendous achievement, an achievement that places her at the forefront of the ranks of the world's greatest poets. Because of the highly idiosyncratic nature of her poems, all earlier editors had felt obliged, to some extent or other, and in order to make them more acceptable to the public, to normalize them by adding titles, smoothing her rhymes, changing words, regularizing punctuation, and relineating them; some editors even went so far as to remove entire stanzas. It becomes a tribute to the power of her poems that, despite this savage treament they somehow survived, and there are many readers, even today, who have grown to love these mutilated versions without ever realizing just how far removed they are from her originals.

Although Johnson himself wasn't entirely free of the slash-and-burn approach to ED's texts - since he apparently felt that readers weren't yet ready for the peculiar lineation that we find in Emily Dickinson's own handwritten versions of the poems - he should nevertheless be credited with having brought the worst of it to an end, and for having given us texts that are closer to the originals than ever before. He is also to be credited with having established an approximate chronological order for the 1775 poems in his edition, and for having provided us with a convenient way of referring to these untitled poems by giving each of them a number, the well-known 'Johnson numbers' which are still standard today. Each numbered poem has been transcribed exactly as it is found in the manuscripts, though with his editorial choice of variant and with lineation normalized. Below each poem comes a list of variants, information about the poem's manuscript source/s, and its publication history. The poems are preceded by 70 pages of Introductory material, which include 20 pages of very interesting photographic facsimiles in illustration of ED's varied writing styles, and the book is rounded out with an Appendix, a Subject Index, and an Index of First Lines.

The present version is an undated reprint, in one volume, of the original 1955 3-volume edition, and is a substantial book of over 1300 pages weighing in at a hefty 4lbs plus. Given the fantastic price of the book, I was amazed to discover that, although bound in full cloth, instead of the pages being sewn in signatures it has been given a glued spine which is nowhere near strong enough to hold the weight of all these pages. Although I'm pretty careful with books, the brand-new copy I examined split at the spine the first time I opened it. Anyone who is interested in the Johnson variorum would be well advised to search for a copy of the much better produced earlier and stitched 3-volume version. Although the present book deserves more than 5 stars for its content, it deserves far less for its poor physical makeup.

As a contribution to scholarship, Johnson's variorum was a magnificent achievement for its time, and helped greatly in establishing Emily Dickinson's reputation. But much has come to light since 1955, and R. W. Franklin's richer 1998 variorum (which unlike the Johnson provides details of the original lineation) may now be said to have superseded it. Details of the Franklin variorum are as follows:

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : VARIORUM EDITION. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-674-67622X HBK.

This is an excellent book for anyone who LOVES Emily Dickinson. Although it does not contain all the different versions of her poems, it is comprehensively edited to have the version of each known poem that is believed to be Dickinson's most complete and revised. This edition also seem to have the most complete collection of poems--1,789-- compared to the other "complete poems". However, if you are looking for an edition for studious reasons, this edition does have different numbering for the poems than the ones usually used (the editor claims them to be in the most accurate chronological order possible).
The binding of this book is VERY nice and has its own ribbon for marking pages. Definitely a nice book.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote.

Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dash with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.

In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.

Johnson produced two different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.

What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is one sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson gave us in the second edition he prepared, his Reader's edition (details of which appear below).

R. W. Franklin has followed the same procedure as Johnson. In other words, readers can feel confident that in both the present edition and in the Johnson, they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft.

Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or R. W. Franklin's more recent Variorum (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.

Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of 1789 of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition.

Franklin's is a scholarly edition, based on his Variorum, which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes. Besides the poems it also contains a brief Introduction, two Appendices, and an Index of First Lines.

This beautifully produced and superbly printed Franklin (which contains 14 more poems than the earlier Johnson) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for them.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has pointed out, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world. Whether you select the Franklin or the Johnson edition, it will become a book that you will cherish, a golden book and endless source of pleasure and inspiration that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

For those who may be interested, details of Johnson's Reader's edition are as follows:

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

Richard Sewall skillfully amasses a large shuffling pile of letters promising insight into the true Emily Dickinson. Starting the book left me hopeful for great things to come. He methodically, almost puritanically, reviews the lives surrounding and including the Dickinson family piling the letters upon each other. Yet, in the end, what possibly made Emily Dickinson withdraw into her room and from the world? Forced to abandon suitors by her Father, rejection by Sue after a brief gay encounter, agoraphobia? Any and all possibilities are buried under the letters and placed in obscure footnotes at best. Emily Dickinson is possibly the greatest poet from North America, and probably was a Gandhi-like reincarntion for the feminist movement in the United States; yet "The Life of Emily Dickinson" doesn't deliver through Richard Sewall's storm of letters.

Richard Sewall's biography of Emily Dickinson, first published almost thirty years ago, is deeply researched and beautifully written. For anyone interested in the life of the great poet, it is indispensable.

But this biography suffers from the same fate as other studies of Dickinson, namely the poet's own secretive nature. There is a distressing lack of sources available about Emily's life and so scholars are forced to over-emphasize the few that do exist. This applies most notably to the writings of Mabel Todd, mistress of Emily's brother Austin and the source of much of what we 'know' about Emily. Whether you view Todd as a well-meaning interloper or a selfish adulterer, her impact upon Dickinson scholarship has been enormous. Sewall acknowledges his reliance upon her writings, and even their undoubted lack of objectivity. But then he proceeds to accept everything she wrote, enthusiastically passing Todd's opinions to the reader under the guise of his own genuine scholarship.

But let the reader beware of such phrases as 'may imply', 'may have been', 'seems almost unavoidable', 'would seem to be', and so on. These abound, particularly in Sewall's discussion of Emily and Austin's wife Susan. He relies almost exclusively upon Todd's writings, which are understandably biased against her lover's wife.

Sewall provides an admirable portrait of Emily's ancestors and of her early years. There is also insightful analyses of many poems, a discussion of the books she loved, and the mystery of 'The Master Letters'. It is only when coming to her adult life, with Emily's dramatic retirement from the outside world, that Sewall is forced into speculation. He writes, "The whole truth about Emily Dickinson will elude us always; she seems almost willfully to have seen to that." And he is correct. The one blot upon his otherwise fine work is that he couldn't accept this simple fact.

Emily Dickinson is easily my favorite poet (also see my review on "Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson", which every poetry lover should own). I took a college course that focused on Emily Dickinson and these were the two books used for that course (there were optional books, which I also read, but nowhere near as good as these). The author's analysis of some poems can be questioned (whose cannot?), but the wealth of material presented is incredible. This is THE reference book about her life. So, if you want details about the woman behind the beautiful words, then get this book. Also consider visiting her house in Amherst (MA), which still has tours during the warmer months. All three things will give you a very good look into her writing.

In this VOICES IN POETRY title, Berry's biographical sketch of the reclusive 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson is interspersed with some of her poems. Each poem is chosen to illustrate important aspects of her life and character, which are still something of a mystery to this day. Stermer's illustrations effectively complement the tone and subject of both the poems and Berry's own text. For both young people and casual readers, this is a beautiful and useful introduction to Dickinson and her poetry.

As an adult, I didn't realize how much that I would appreciate this book. I wish that it had been available to me when I was younger. I believe that this book is definitely intended for children between the ages of 9 to 12. I think a child under that age may not understand the full impact of the poetry.

The introduction to this book gave a good synopsis of the life of Emily Dickinson. Also, I liked how some of the poems were mentioned by page number to check out in the book.

Visually, this book was on target. The illustrator was very detailed with the drawings. In one section of the book, Emily Dickinson writes some poems that were riddles. The drawings give you the answer to those riddles.

It was very helpful to find definitions at the bottom of each page for some of the poems that may have had more difficult words. I learned that a frigate was a medium-sized warship with sails and that coursers were graceful, swift horses or runners.

This book supports the ideas of reading and poetry. I will end this review with one of Emily Dickinson's poems, on page 44, to support those ideas:

There is no frigate like a book/ To take us lands away,/ Nor any coursers like a page/ Of prancing poetry/ This traverse may the poorest take/ Without oppress of toll;/ How frugal is the chariot/ That bears a human soul!

"How can you print a piece of your own soul," Dickinson, p. 51

This is the 2nd in the Krull and Hewitt's "Lives of ..." series. The book contains 19 chapters on 20 writers in birth order: Murasaki Shikibu (973?-1025?), Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Charlotte & Emily Bronte (1816-1855 & 1818-1848), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Jack London (1876-1916), Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), E. B. White (1899-1985), Zora Neale Hurston (1901?-1960), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

This is a perfect book for young adolescents and pre-teens who as they grow and mature frequently feel awkward. Krull introduces us to the idiosyncrasies of the literary. Some of the authors were loners, eccentric, a wee bit peculiar. Michael Jackson's behaviors might seem normal when held in comparison. Some retreated into themselves. Some sought out adventures. Some as adults were unsuccessful at the ordinary.

Some worked at a young age to support the family. Some took daily walks, very long daily walks. Some were not healthy and therefore wrote in bed. There were some similarities and some differences, but they all shared a singular conviction to write and write they each did well.

Hewitt's delightful portraits of the writers are precious. My favorite portrait is of Frances Hodgson Burnett of "The Secret Garden" fame. Her hat is the secret garden.

Given the high price of the book, I was surprised that Krull did not include a list of the authors' books and/or poems and the publication years. END

This book is a fun and informative book. The pictures are filled with humorous meanings and hidden information. The book keeps the reader's attention by keeping the included information short and simple, but also makes sure that the reader gets as much possible about the author. This book is great for kids and students to use as a report source as it is filled with great information. Kids would rather use this book as an information source rather than an encylopedia since the information is easy to understand. Authors in there are some you may not know, ( Murasaki Shikibu) and some well know ones ( Charles Dickens). I am glad I purchsed this book. I really liked the pictures which are so vibrant with color. This would make a great buy.

I enjoyed reading this book. The author captured the world of a liberal arts college, especially the non-academic aspects of this very inward looking environment. For me , the characters and their interactions were more interesting than the mystery plot. Joanne Dobson very effectively captured the pain some students go through with her character Sophie Warzek. This is a book I had to finish reading.

For the past semester, Emily Dickinson scholar, Karen Pelletier has fended off the unwanted advances of her Enfield College colleague, Randy Astin-Berger. At the faculty Christmas party, Randy gets drunk. When a bored Karen goes to get her coat out of a closet, she is shocked as a dead Randy fall into her arms.

The police rule Karen out as a suspect and enlist her help in investigating the case which takes place in the hallowed halls of academia. Soon, a second corpse, a student, is found strangled to death. Karen wonders what is the connection between the two murdered individuals. She soon realizes that the link is Randy's research which he discussed with the deceased student. As Karen investigates the two murderers, she gets closer to uncovering the truth, but also places herself in mortal danger from a killer who wants to prevent Randy's research from being published.

QUIETER THAN SLEEP is an interesting mixing of English literature with a first rate mystery, leading to an intelligent who-done-it. Campus intrigue adds bits of wit to the drama, leaving readers wanting more novels starring Karen Pelletier. Joanne Dobson scores big time with her debut novel.

Harriet Klausner

Readers who appreciate an intricate mystery plot will enjoy Dobson immensely. This book has it all--a tightly-woven, haiku of a mystery; interesting, well-developed characters who act in synchronization with their motives (and whose motives stem from their personalities); and an intimate and realistic exploration of the specialized world of academia.

It's a shame how few mystery writers manage to hit all three targets, but Dobson shows herself to be a master (that she keeps this up through the next two books is nothing short of amazing). Dobson's specialty (in my opinion) is the integration of subplots and side stories with the main mystery. Everything happens for a reason, and the reason always has to do with the mystery (not just to throw the reader off-track).

I'm looking forward to the fourth book in the series this winter.

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to you that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

This book is awesome! Everyone should buy it.

This is a superb edition of Dickinson's poems. It is "reader friendly" with updated punctuation (which purists may not like) with an excellent selection. The Billy Collins introduction is outstanding, being highly informative and entertaining without any pretensions whatsoever. He adds great insight into Dickinson's use of common meter, language, metaphor, and other techniques. Grab a bottle of water and an apple and spend a great afternoon or two with this exceptional volume.

In this story this little girl is curious about her neighbor and this letter her mother recieved. He say footprints coming from her neighbors house to her door. This neighbor hasn't left her house in 20 years. This lady is Emily. Later in the story they decide to go visit her. They went to play music for her. Emily just wanted spring that is why she asked them to play her music n the letter. The little girl keeps thinking about the mystery of Emily when spring has come. This Emily is Emily Dickinson and she is shut in the house for so long because she is writing poetry. She has the little girls mother come to play music becase it inspires her. This is a very good story and might even be true story. I enjoyed it.

The book "Emily" was an ok book for me because I'm just not into mystery books but you other kids may like it. Its about a myth that a person is living in a yellow house and has never came out for 20 years. This little girl, Emily, has always wanted to go there and give the person some bulbs that grow into lillies in the spring. Will she do it? Who knows? You need to read the book to find out what happens next.

"There is a woman on our street they call the Myth. She lives with her sister in the yellow house across the road. Her room is the one up on the left at the front. If you stand on tiptoe, you can see it peeping over the high hedge as you pass. She hasn't left her house in nearly twenty years. If strangers come to call, she runs and hides herself away. Some people say she's crazy. But to me she's Emily..." When our young narrator's mother is invited to cross the street and play the piano for the elusive Emily, the little girl can't wait to accompany her. Emily is nowhere to be seen, but Mother sits and nervously begins to play. "When Mother stopped she turned to me. A sound of clapping rippled down the stairs, and then a small voice like a little girl's. "Dear friend, you put the robin's song to shame. Play more. Already I can feel the spring." As her mother continues, the little girl creeps up the winding stairs to investigate, and at the bend at the top, finds a small woman dressed in white, sitting and listening to the beautiful music from below. From her pocket, our narrator takes out two lily bulbs. "I brought you some spring...If you plant them they will turn to lilies." Quickly Emily dashed off some words on a scrap of paper and handed it to her guest. "Hide this away, as I will hide your gift to me. Perhaps in time they both will bloom." And so as spring arrived, so did the lilies, and a young girl's special poem from Emily Dickinson..... Michael Bedard has captured the quiet and intriguing reclusive nature of Emily Dickinson in his well researched historical story. "In writing this book, I went to Amherst to visit the house where she lived. I sat in the parlor with the piano, visited the room where she wrote. I stood beneath her window and she lowered this story to me." His simple, eloquent, and engaging text transports the reader back in time to nineteenth century Amherst, Massachusetts, to spend an afternoon with Emily Dickinson. You can almost hear the piano drifting up the stairs, and the scratches of her pen as Emily dashes off a poem. Barbara Cooney's beautifully evocative oil paintings are rich in period detail, and complement the text with their quiet settings. With an Afterword to complete and enhance the story, Emily is truly a masterpiece of word and art, and a fascinating story that shouldn't be missed.

This work should be read by anyone interested in biography, but not for reasons the author might suspect. Here is a perfect example of biography as personal agenda. Here is biography as a skillfully written---but convoluted---interpretation of the life, letters and poems of Emily Dickinson.

Wolff should have written an editorial and clearly marked it as such.

However, one good service was provided. My friends and I would read a poem being discussed by Wolff, and then read her "forced" interpretation of it. We had many hearty laughs. But we also felt genuine pity for Wolff. Is this what she has to do to defend her agenda? Does she have no other means?

I do not worry about scholars reading this book. In fact they should read it. They will easily discover those parts that are useful---and there are many---and discard the rest. But what about young students? What of those who do not know Emily and pick this book as their first meeting with her?

Instead, may I suggest they read "The Capsule of the Mind" by Theodora Ward. It is also a psychological look at Emily Dickinson. Ward is the granddaughter of Doctor and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland, two of Emily's closest friends. Ward was also an assistant to Thomas H. Johnson, Harvard University, the person most responsible for bringing us Emily's letters and poems. In fact, Ward herself was inspired to become a Dickinson scholar when she discovered sixty-five of Emily's letters in her family's attic.

Cynthia Wolff, please spare us your politically correct---but factually incorrect---views on Emily Dickinson.

Joe Psarto 27843 Detroit Road # 412 Westlake, Ohio 44145 (440-835-5179)>jpsarto@juno.com<

The greatest strength of this biography is found in its interpretations of ED's poems. Wolff is a careful and insightful reader, capable of teasing out many layers of meaning in even the most elliptical pieces. Her analyses sometimes left me breathless; there's a special pleasure in discovering new meanings in familiar poems.

As noted by another reviewer, Wolff does approach this biography with a kind of agenda. She is most interested in demonstrating how Dickinson rebelled (both in work and life) against the Trinitarian Christianity of her upbringing. Wolff really excels here, and her insight is delicious. Wolff also imbues her readings with a feminist tilt; she never descends into theoretical jargon, but her readings are often skewed by her concern with gender. I wasn't bothered by this, since her interpretations still proved fruitful and provocative. Wolff is weakest in describing ED's relationship with her mother; the psychological bent she brings to this rings a bit hollow for me, and she rides her insight about the infant poet's emotional deprivation through the entire work. Her speculation, in my opinion, isn't helpful or needed.

As a life story, this volume isn't quite so complete as it might've been. It's more a work of criticism than biographical scholarship (although Wolff brings much learning to bear in her critiques on ED's work). If you're interested in the specifics of Dickinson's life, I'd recommend starting with Sewall's monumental biography.

It's also worth noting that some critics have disagreed with Wolff's commentary on Dickinson's life, particular the poet's childhood (Wolff's take on it is rather bleak, a conclusion not necessarily supported by the historical records). I'm not a Dickinson scholar, so I can't answer to these arguments. I do love ED's poetry deeply, however, and found this book a compassionate and fascinating read.

Having read (more or less) every biography of Dickinson -- perhaps the greatest poet in English and one of the great literary sensibilities on record -- Cynthia Wolff's is the one which stands out as placing her in the appropriate context. Other biographies (for example, Sewell's) may contain a greater degree of sheer information, but none is so intelligently selective as this. Wolff's scholarship is something one can only marvel at. She attempts to, and succeeds brilliantly at, surrounding Dickinson by her literary and cultural milieu, the revivalist fervor sweeping New England at the time, her familial dynamics, the role of someone of her gender and class at that place and time. Rather than see just the face of Dickinson, a full portrait of her world emerges.

Wolff's readings are unconventional because, quite frankly, she's one of the few who's gone to the trouble of realizing that Dickinson had an ICONOGRAPHY, that certain terms appear with regularity of time and meaning. "Ample", "wrestle", "elect", "father", "bird", "bee" -- one can go on and on, if one really looks -- all derive meaning *cumulatively* from Dickinson's poetic work and voluminous, lapidarian correspondence. Many terms are consistently ironic, or mean their opposites; 'reading' the poems without realizing this will produce the kinds of interpretations produced with disappointing regularity by less careful critics. Wolff has drunk it all in, and synthesized it, in a monumental work of decipherment.

This probably shouldn't be the only Dickinson biography one reads. But it should be at the top of any such list.

Emily Bronte is not as well-known as her sister Charlotte who wrote Jane Eyre, that, it must be said, far surpasses Wuthering Heights. I'd like to think that every book has a good, universal element we can relate to. And they do. Wuthering Heights is a story of revenge, passion and metaphysical love. It is a Gothic novel set appropriately in the bleakness of the Moors in England. Emily Bronte brings out a gorgeous narrative. It is confusing because it has the points of views quickly shifting from one personage to another. Nelly tells it for the most part. But the love story is incredible. Heathcliff and Catherine, as selfish and cold characters that they are, share a love that binds them even when they are apart in life and in death. It can be romantic. But the reason they teach this in school is because of the scholarly attention it receives, being a Bronte product. I think Jane Eyre may be of higher calibre but Wuthering Heights has its brilliant moments. It is a classic. I say it has many colors because we can be disgusted by the course actions of Heatchliff as he orchestrates his revenge on the people around him. We can also dislike the snobbish personality of Catherine and her choosing money over true love. But we can also sympathize for the lovers as human beings. This is a drama that can take place anywhere on earth. It is human drama. Bronte is as much in the same line as other universal writers including Dante and Shakespeare. Yes, Emily should be proud of her masterpiece. At times boring but worth reading on your own. I highly recommend this great work. Try to see beyond the boring parts and into the love and universalities !

I really enjoyed this book. The imagery is great, as the gloomy environment immediately connotes an aura of hopelessness around all the characters involved. It not only reflects upon the characters in the novel, but is a dark depiction of the world we are all thrust into when we are born.

The love between Catherine and Heathcliff also reveals a gloomy view of life. Their love is not one that hopes for a future happiness. Instead, it manifests itself as a need that takes no consideration of the consequences. There is no hope in this story, only the pain that occurs in both being denied a loved one and in having that loved one.

As I read this book, I never found myself wishing for the best for these tragic characters. Instead, I felt like I was watching a course of events that had to reach its eventual conclusion, and no amount of effort could change that. In this world only suffering exists, and the only relief exists in death.

Needless to say, this isn't a cheerful story, but it is nonetheless fascinating.

WARNING: reading this review will spoil some of the plot of WH.

I grinned when Sis, back in high school, told me I reminded her of Heathcliff. I remembered from the (old, old) movie that he was some evil fellow. Then I read the book. And stopped grinning. I'm amazed this book would ever be assigned to high school 'kids.' It's humorless and ultra-realistic. Every page reeks of evil and has selfishly evil (meaning normal) characters. Heathcliff was a tortured being but hardly innocent. Cathy was a solipsistic, driven fool. Even the Cliff Notes booklet for WH is surprisingly short (I read The Notes after burning through the book in a week) as if Cliff's was horrified to study this book! Cliff's good observation about Heathcliff is that his sole emotion is actually pity/affection for Hareton and that his 'love' for Cathy is, in fact, an animal possessive jealous rage. I changed after reading this book. For the better, I don't know. There is a point in the book where Heathcliff's every action evokes disgust and hatred, and then...as a man...I began to feel what he felt. For whatver his faults, I began to connect fully with his insane rage, and that his ideal of 'love' for Catherine--however warped--had been stolen from him forever. I understood his ruthlessness and love for no person or thing after Catherine's death. By the way, not to parrot the critics, but it is true that the marriage of Cathy and Hareton is NOT some kind of full circle, happier ending. It's more like holding hands in Hell. I left this book sadder than when I started it. After reading it, I doubt anyone anywhere is getting 'wiser.'

If you want to read Emily Dickinson's poetry in their original form and you want to discover the incredible vitality of this poet's intellect, imagination, and artistic skill, don't buy this book. The poems in this collection are "improved" versions of the original poems which can be found in other available editions. Moreover, the selections include most of ED's least interesting work. When ED died two people selected some of her poems and prepared them for publication by adding punctuation, altering words, and even omitting words, lines, and whole stanzas so that the polite readers of her day would find ED's poems more palatable and less offensive.

Emily Dickinson lived her life in a solitary room; a place where she found amazing insight writing letters an poems. She marks her verses with simple phrases that show the reader a vision and not its personal interpretation. In some cases she puts into words what most of us attempt to capture with our thoughts. This extraordinary skill is a mark of only the best poets, but not all can write consistently as Emily can. Despite the mellow tone of the majority of her work, Emily still captures the flavor of life without compromising its tranquility. Emily never suffers from redundant confusion and her poems reflect a love for solitary beauty.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has observed, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world.