Although Emily Dickinson is a marvelous poet, this edition is not a good one to buy. The catalogue claims it is printed from "the earliest, most authorative editions" without noting that the earliest editions were heavily edited, eliminating much of what makes Dickinson unusual and brilliant. For example, another reviewer quotes from poem 258, which should read "There's a certain slant of light, / Winter Afternoons-- / That oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes--"; the first editor didn't think many people would know what the word "heft" meant, so he (without Dickinson's posthumous permission) simply replaced it. Get a volume of Dickinson's poems, certainly! But not this one.

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, a 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 us 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 little gem is a treasure trove of the best of Emily Dickinson. All of her best known works are found nestled within these pages. President John Adams once gave the advice that you would never be lonely with a poet in your pocket. It is so true. I carry this little book with me everywhere, and find myself inspired by the magic within the pages. The poems have been ordered in a logical way either by theme or topic. It includes "Hope" , "The Chariot", "March" and my favorite, "There's a certain slant of Light on winter afternoons that oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes..." Buy this book if you wear your heart on your sleeve, your passion on your paper and your soul on your solitude.

This book is fiction and yet when I picked it up I thought I was getting the actual diary of Emily Dickinson! The writing is similar to what Emily might have written in her diary but she did not write any of this. The author takes way too many liberties with this title and deceives those of us who are true fans of the immortal Emily Dickinson. Read Emily's poetry instead and you will find a living diary directly from this beautiful woman's life.

Customer reviews prior to this one here, as well as the author and publisher's manner of presention of this book blatantly titled THE DIARY OF EMILY DICKINSON, present a kind of ethical dilemma to this reader and lover of Dickinson's poetry.

Unless literary history has changed mightily while I, like a modern Rip Van Winkle, slept right through it, the fact is that IF Emily Dickinson ever kept a diary or journal, it was either suppressed or destroyed. Probably the latter, by the same friends and family members who heavily edited (and had the audacity to change Emily's words in) the first printings of her poems.

You will note, if you read the reader reviews posted here before this one, that two out of three amazon.com readers believed they were reading a diary actually written by Emily Dickinson herself.

I am frankly distressed by the publication of a book that does not make its fictional nature more obvious and upfront.

I just bought this book to help me do some research on Emily Dickinson and did not realize the "diary" is actually fictional. The "novel" is so well done that you will believe that you are reading actual diary entries written by Emily Dickinson. There are even editorial notes throughout the diary to help clarify the entries. The prologue doesn't even clue you in to this "April Fool's". I was flabbergasted when I was halfway through the book and so happened to glance at the back cover and realized this diary was actually fictional! Very well done! Very well done! No matter, it has helped me understand Emily Dickinson's poetry a lot better . . . Jamie Fuller threads throughout the diary actual events with likely events . . . oh it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant! Bravo! I am laughing hard still from the shock of discovering my error.

It was a wonderful idea, but I was disappointed by the book. In my view the illustrations are stylized, sterile, and off-putting - you can see if you agree with me by enlarging the cover and taking a look at it - , the graphic design and color patterns produced visual clutter, and the poems are in not-easy-to-read stylized italics. But what prompted me to comment was the alteration of language of at least one, and I suspect more than one, of the poems. The eight-line poem I checked begins: "I'm nobody. Who are you?" In Ms. Winter's book line four of this poem substitutes "advertise" for "banish us," line six substitutes "frog" for "fog," and line seven substitutes "June" for "day." As you can see for yourself, these changes degrade the poem. I suppose this is considered legitimate bowdlerization, given the audience. I don't agree. In any event the author and editors were remiss in failing to include a notice that at least one of the poems was altered.

"My sister Emily was buried today..." So begins Jeanette Winter's very brief biography of poet, Emily Dickinson. Narrated by her sister, Lavinia, as she cleans out Emily's room, we learn just a few small facts about the elusive poet. She was a recluse who lived in the smallest upstairs room of the family's house. She loved words, studied the dictionary, and spent all her time writing on scraps of paper. She wore only white dresses, and most townfolk thought her strange. After her death, Lavinia finds drawers full of those scraps of paper, Emily's "letters to the world," and Ms Winter fills the rest of this small volume with a selection of 21 poems, some famous...There Is No Frigate Like A Book, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?, and If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking, and others less recognizable to complete her story. Her vibrant illustrations, done in an engaging folk art sytle, complement the text and enhances each poem beautifully. Though a bit light on biographical material, Emily Dickinson's Letters To The World is a simple and intriguing introduction to a remarkable poet that should open interesting discussions and whet the appetite of youngsters 7 and older, and send them out looking for more.

Mr. Mitchell's work is the kind of speculative fiction that passes as literary criticism today. This book is a tedious, pretentious piece of claptrap that won't even delight other Dickenson scholars.

Mr Mitchell has penned a book which will be seen as a watershed in literary criticism. "The Monarch of Perception" is a truly perceptive piece. It uncovers many a stone in the field of Emily Dickinson studies, and is not afraid to look at what lies beneath. For anyone who wishes to learn about not only Emily Dickinson, but also America, and even the world, this book is a must. Buy it!

Good readings, but the producer apparently felt the poetry can not stand on its own and added background music throughout. It distracts terribly from the music, and never has any relation in mood to the poetry. Avoid this tape.

If you like Emily Dickenson (and I do) you will love this audio cassette. The readers include Meryl Streep, Sharon Stone, and other great female talents. They read the poems with style and a subtility that matches the work of the poet. After hearing the presentations, I came away feeling that the poems were studied by the readers and for the most part understood and delivered accordingly. Thumbs up!

A Biography with Factual Errors

I had been warned that this book was poorly written and edited, that it had no documentation, and that
it did not succeed in proving the author's arguments. Nothing, however, could ever have prepared me for the inaccuracies and unwarranted assumptions of the book itself.

Ms. Farr's thesis itself contains a serious error in fact. She states, without qualification, that Emily Dickinson wore a nuns habit because she did not know who the master was.

The book goes downhill from here. Ms. Farr's evidence that no one is Master includes several loosely-crafted - one might rather say, accidental - stories about liaisons between Emily Dickinson and her women acquaintances.
Farr builds several arguments on speculation. Perhaps the most egregious example is the question
of Susan's house next door. After establishing the existence of the ivory gown, Farr asserts, in a short but vacuous epilogue that she really doesn't know who master was. Or maybe there wasn't a master. Or if there was, any body's guess is as good as hers.

For several pages Farr proceeds as if this connection were fact, making a few tenuous connections between Dickinson's poetry and women, and kisses behind closed doors. Then she admits it is all fiction. In addition, Farr tells us that when Emily died, the master was known but then she does not feel that s/he is known, as it might be a woman.

I have saved just enough space for the epilogue and the bulk of the book. The epilogue is not worth the meager price of this empty paperback.

English teacher in Texas

Farr's epistolary novel about the life and passions of Emily Dickinson is a mesmerizing, inspiring, zesty read. Based on facts gleaned through letters and Dickinson's poetry, the story elaborates on Dickinson's 10-month school career, on her passions for women and for men, and on her final, ailing years. Like Cunningham's "The Hours" and Zackheim's "Violette's Embrace", it's a wonderful tribute to a woman whose true life is obscured by history. Farr's rendering of Dickinson's school year brought to mind Rosemary Manning's "The Chinese Garden" and Dorothy Strachey Bussy's "Olivia".

Considering its high price and the fact that it calls itself an 'Encyclopedia,' and considering the incredible importance of Emily Dickinson's writings and the vast amount of research and criticism they have given rise to, one would have expected this book to have been a rather hefty and substantial volume.

One would have expected, for example, many interesting photographs, illustrations, useful tables, maps, genealogies, discussions of _many_ of her important poems, detailed and classified bibliographies of early editions, modern editions, biographies, criticism, etc. And one would have expected much more. After all, this book is supposed to be an 'Encyclopedia.'

Unfortunately we get very little of the above. What we get is a standard 8vo-size volume (6.5 by 9.5 inches) of just 395 pages of bare and unadorned text. After a brief Preface, a Chronology, and a list of Abbreviations, 312 pages of articles follow. The articles vary from paragraph to essay-length, and the book is rounded out with two Appendices, an 18-page Bibliography (of which 16 pages are devoted to Critical Books, Articles, and Dissertations), an Index of Poems Cited, and a General Index.

Interestingly, in a book already top-heavy with biographical entries, and that might have included so much else - I personally expected to find many more discussions of individual poems, for example - it concludes with 9 pages 'About the Contributors' - their affiliations, major publications, and interests.

The articles are arranged alphabetically. Here is the entire crop for 'A' : "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" (P986); "After great pain a formal feeling comes -" (P341); Aldrich, Thomas Bailey; Ambiguity; American Dictionary of the English Language; Amherst; Amherst Academy; Amherst College; Anthon, Catherine (Scott) Turner (1831-1917); Aphorism; "Apparently with no surprise" (P1624); Asian Responses to Dickinson; The Atlantic Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics; Austin.

So much for the letter 'A.' To properly evaluate the scope of this book and the quality of its articles (some of which read quite well), one would of course have to be a Dickinson scholar, which I'm not. I do note, however, the absence under 'A' of an entry on 'Animals,' which in view of the many animals we find in Dickinson's poems seems very strange.

I also note, on turning to the entry for 'Carlo,' Emily Dickinson's pet dog, the following statement: "He is the only animal in her entire corpus given human emotion and intelligence" (p.41). This statement is utterly and completely false, and could easily be shown to be so, by, for example, an analysis of a poem such as "The waters chased him as he fled" (P1749). I've also run into other highly dubious statements in this book, particularly ones that seem determined at all costs to claim Dickinson for the Christian camp, whereas it seems perfectly evident to me that her mind was far too subtle to be contained by Christianity, or indeed by any official religion.

This book is very much a product of the official world of Dickinson scholarship. Its orientation is squeaky-clean orthodox, and it has either rejected or distorted much that isn't to its taste. It will prove a handy (though misleading) reference work for students, and the few ED cultists who stumble upon it will no doubt approve of it.

The book is bound in full cloth, stitched, and beautifully printed on excellent strong paper, but to me its contents came as a terrible disappointment. Gudrun Grabher's 'The Emily Dickinson Handbook' (1998) turned out to be a far better book, a superb collection of articles from which I feel that I'm actually learning something about Emily Dickinson. Some of its contributors are also found in the 'Encyclopedia,' but perhaps they weren't operating under quite the same constraints.

I enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems. This book does justice to her love story. It is a wonderful book which I will share with my poetry friends. It beautifully captures her inspiring life. Now I know why she wrote from her heart.

Dickinson is a difficult poet, and one of the main purposes of this book of the life of her and critiques of her poems is to
try to clarify any and all points where the meaning would not be perfectly clear to a reader of reasonable intelligence.
Bill Arnold makes use of poem variants recorded in the Johnson editions which had not come to light. His pages are full, detailed, and extensive, and in addition offer full commentaries on all her love poem. He tells us that his aim was to create a new understanding for the general reader, which would bring these cryptic poems to readers both in America and abroad. He offered, "The untold story of Emily Dickinson's 'Secret Love' can now be told in its entirety. She disclosed their affair and his name via acrostics and anagrams in the tradition of the French court-love poets." It does that and more. As sometimes exasperatingly obscure poems hit you, Bill Arnold details exactly which code unravels the mystery of who was the Master in her life. The poems are preceded by interesting prose passages and the book is rounded out with a biography of the author. It's a compact easy to read book and pleasant to handle. Now, readers can know that her secret love was Sam Bowles, a publisher of the Springfield Daily Republican, and an intimate of her brother Austin. In a book of this nature the problem is always that of trying to strike a balance between giving the reader too much help or too little. Bill Arnold is a Dickinson scholar who has put sufficient details to prove why the scandalous relationship did not surface in Emily Dickinson's lifetime. As the author comments, "Thus, the reason Emily Dickinson remained unpublished in her lifetime becomes self-evident." The secret-love affair is not so shocking as revealing of what her poems mean, and her anagrams do "now make sense." Although Bill Arnold may have given some readers a bit more help than they need, on the whole he seems to have struck a nice balance, and most readers will probably find most of his notes and commentary to be both helpful and illuminating. It is an excellent introduction to those who know little of the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson.

This is great book for poetlovers. I got mine at amazon. It teels me all i need to know bout the poet. She has got so many good pomes. My but i don understn the nasty rightups some people write. Book makes good cents to me. i wsrite pomes to.

Walsh's account of the Todd-Dickinson affair is probably the most unbalanced work in the name of scholarship I have read so far. Unabashedly biased and judgemental, this book reeks of the author's personal issues with matters of adultery, while no effort is expended in trying to understand the complicated dynamic between all the adults involved in the affair.

Among other ludicrous and reductive explanantions for the behavior of Dickinson and Todd, Walsh asserts that Dickinson's participation in an almost fifteen-year affair was driven by a desire for "revenge against the fate" that had taken his son, who died as a young child. Walsh's grip on the psychology behind this stops here as does the supporting evidence. However, a great more effort is made to "justify" Austin's role in the affair while Todd, according to Walsh, is guilty of the deliberate "wrecking" of the reputation of Austin's wife, Susan, assuming that for her, malice toward others was the driving force behind her participation in the affair.

Apparently, Walsh is joining the ranks of a long line of historians and scholars who see fit to crucify their female subjects for deviant sexual behavior, while ignoring or justifying the same behavior in men. It is also interesting to note that Todd's sexual behavior is the just about the only aspect of her life mentioned in this book; her numerous accomplishments as a musician, author, painter, seasoned travelor and lecturer are dismissed or ignored. Once again, with Walsh's help, the historical representation of an ambitious, successful female is reduced to that of a conniving, malicious "hussy" whose sexual behavior exclusively defines her.

It seems odd that Walsh or any other investigator on this topic feels the need to "justify" or blame anyone's actions, well over a century after the fact. Susan and Austin Dickinson and Mabel and David Todd were all strong, creative personalities who created their own complex dynamic which in turn created the behaviors we have evidence of today. Understanding what happened between them as a group is nearly impossible, but reducing their individual motivations to a series of quick explanations is simply foolish and unrealistic. No individual is this easily explained through biography, historical research or other speculation. Even Walsh's attempts to portray Susan as the "victim" in the affair are reductive and insulting. That she should be viewed historically as a passive martyr, who "endured" the events around her, sacrificing her own accomplishments and reputation is ridiculous. Given her intelligence and social dexterity, it seems her role must be given a more complex motivation than this.

If nothing else, Walsh's account raises some important questions about just how much social attitudes toward women have changed over the years. Do we still consider successful, ambitious women who challenge the sexual status quo to be threats to society? Mabel Todd extended the notion of "ownership" in a nineteenth-century marriage to include more than one partner, and partners of her choosing. Mr. Walsh's aggressive condemnation of her suggests that if an educated woman were to suggest such a radical definition of multiple partner marriage today, she too would be considered deviant and perhaps malicious. Have attitudes toward women evolved to the degree where women might be able to criticize the accepted social dynamic of marriage without fear of castigation? Mr. Walsh's book suggests not, but I hope his view is an anomaly and that Mrs. Todd was not ahead of our time as well as her own.

John Evangelist Walsh's books explore murky literary corridors, sweeping aside rumor, innuendo, and distortion. In 'This Brief Tragedy', he examines the last days of Emily Dickinson, with particular emphasis upon the affair between her older brother Austin and the young wife of his colleague, Mabel Todd. Walsh brings a fresh and critical eye to this relationship, using their own letters and diaries to reveal the truth of this celebrated 'love affair'. Neither Austin or Mabel are well-served by their own words.

Walsh also argues for a new study of Austin's long-suffering wife, Susan. Susan was Emily's closest friend and supporter, but she has suffered through a century of bad press largely because of Mabel Todd's peculiar place in Dickinson scholarship. Todd was asked to type copies of Emily's poem for publication because the Dickinson family did not wish to risk mailing the original manuscripts. She did so, and from that humble beginning, managed to fashion herself into the authority on all things related to Emily Dickinson. In truth, the two women never met and Emily had a low opinion of the woman who willfully toyed with the emotions of both her nephew and brother.

But all lovers of great literature were desperate for information about the reclusive poet from Amherst. As various Dickinson relatives died in rapid succession, Mabel rewrote her own place in Emily's history. She found a receptive audience and few scholars have questioned her true motives. For this reason alone, Walsh's book is a necessary companion piece to Richard Sewall's celebrated two-volume biography of Emily. Sewall accepted Mabel's version of events so thoroughly that it mars his otherwise fine work. Neither Emily or Susan Dickinson left behind journals or diaries regarding the tumultuous events of the 1880s and '90s. But Mabel did. As a result, she has been given too much influence upon Dickinson scholarship. Read Sewall, but pick up this book immediately afterwards.