# The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON
BY MARTHA DICKINSON BIANCHI
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON
by her niece MARTHA DICKINSON BIANCHI
With Illustrations
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1924
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY MARTHA DICKINSON BIANCHI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
FOR THEIR ENTHUSIASM, INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING, AND CRITICAL ASSISTANCE, MY GRATITUDE TO FERRIS GREENSLET, CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE, AND ALFRED LEETE HAMPSON
M. D. B.
However the present volume may lift the veil, or presume to lead her shy reality into the light of mortal dawns again, Emily alone supplies the only clue to herself, the articles of her Faith—
The Soul's superior instants Occur to Her alone, When friend and earth's occasion Have infinite withdrawn.
Or she, Herself, ascended To too remote a height, For lower recognition Than Her Omnipotent.
This mortal abolition Is seldom, but as fair As Apparition—subject To autocratic air.
Eternity's disclosure To favorites, a few, Of the Colossal substance Of immortality.
The essential difficulty in presenting a Life of Emily Dickinson has been enhanced by the sacred pact observed with her chosen few, that all letters should be burned after her death. This excludes exactly those which might have held together the frail external incidents of her days, which seem so scantily supplied to those ​ignorant of the thronging events of the Spirit which eternally preoccupied her.
This present record is made up from family letters hitherto withheld, deathless recollections, and many sentences overheard from her own lips and scrupulously set down as too unique to be squandered upon the passing moment. The Letters formerly printed have now been chronologically arranged, and as far as of intrinsic value, retained; others have been added from my article in the "Atlantic Monthly," and "The Single Hound," a volume composed entirely of poetic flashes sent to her brother's wife, my mother, on every gust of impulse.
A high exigence constrains the sole survivor of her family to state her simply and truthfully, in view of a public which has, doubtless without intention, misunderstood and exaggerated her seclusion—amassing a really voluminous stock of quite lurid misinformation of irrelevant personalities. She has been taught in colleges as a weird recluse, rehearsed to women's clubs as a lovelorn sentimentalist—even betrayed by one American essayist of repute to appear a fantastic eccentric.
On the other hand, she has been named "the Feminine Walt Whitman" in at least one of the great universities; in another—
Of the Colossal substance Of immortality.
Martha Dickinson Bianchi
THE EVERGREENS AMHERST MASSACHUSETTS
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1943, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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