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Emily Dickinson (Un)discovered


In the April, 1862, issue of The Atlantic Monthly there appeared a lengthy article titled "Letter to a Young Contributor," by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson--an eminent Bostonian known both as a literary critic and as an active abolitionist--offered advice to enthusiastic young writers. The Dickinson family subscribed to The Atlantic Monthly, and it seems likely that Emily would have read the article. Much of the letter touches upon themes that were crucial to Dickinson's project: in it Higginson described editors as "always hungering and thirsting after novelties" and receptive to "new or obscure contributors"; he remarked on "the magnificent mystery of words" and praised writing that can "palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables"; and he extolled compression as a virtue--"Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter; there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence."

Dickinson apparently took Higginson to be a kindred spirit (despite his advice that writers reduce themselves "to short allowance of parentheses and dashes") and wrote to him that same month, enclosing several poems. Thus began a correspondence that lasted until Dickinson's death, some twenty years later. Higginson was baffled by Dickinson--he recognized her unique talent but called her poetic gait "spasmodic"--and did not make efforts to publish her work. When the first volume of Dickinson's poetry was published, posthumously, in 1890, it enjoyed enormous popularity, and Higginson--who found this success "curious" and confessed that "even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered"--published an article in the October, 1891, Atlantic, titled "Emily Dickinson's Letters," that quoted much of the correspondence he received from the reclusive poet, including several of her poems.



-- Toby Lester

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