Books

FIRST EDITION, one of only 960 copies printed. A beautiful copy. When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, very few people knew of the existence of her poetry. After her death, however, her sister Lavinia discovered a box of manuscript poems by Dickinson and immediately recognized their value. Determined that the public should not be deprived of Dickinson's poetry, Lavinia enlisted the help of her sister's friends, the literary scholar Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd (her brother's mistress) to edit and publish the poems. The first volume, Poems, appeared in 1890 in an extremely limited run of only 500 copies. It was received favorably, encouraging Higginson and Todd to prepare more works for publication. As Todd explains in the Preface to this, the first edition of the "Second Series" of poems: "The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,-life and love and death. That 'irresistible needle-touch,' as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties." Poems: Second Series was published in November 1891, a year after the first volume. It had a print run of 960, still very limited, but nearly double that of Poems. It contains 166 poems, including many of her most famous, such as "I'm nobody! Who are you?", "Wild nights! Wild nights!", "Hope is the thing with feathers", and many, many others. A third volume (Poems: Third Series) followed in 1896. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891. Octavo, original decorated olive cloth; custom chemise and slipcase. Note: There were two bindings for the first edition, first printing (this one, in olive decorated cloth, and one in two-tone cloth, no priority established). Binding with only the slightest wear; text nearly immaculate. An outstanding copy - the finest we've handled - of a book particularly prone to wear.

An extensive collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry, presented in its original unaltered form as edited by Thomas H. Johnson.