Description

“WHERE THE LETTER LEAVES OFF AND THE POEM BEGINS”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF EMILY DICKINSON’S LETTERS, WITH SISTER LAVINIA DICKINSON’S CALLING CARD LAID IN

DICKINSON, Emily. Letters. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894. Two volumes. 12mo, original gilt-stamped green buckram.

First edition, first issue of this collection of Emily Dickinson’s letters, one of 1000 copies printed, edited by her friend Mabel Loomis Todd. With the calling card of Dickinson’s sister Lavinia laid in to Volume I.

Emily Dickinson published only 11 poems during her lifetime; but after her death in 1886, her younger sister Lavinia discovered a locked box containing 1775 manuscript poems. Emily’s friend Mabel Todd edited and published the three series of these poems until a quarrel between the Dickinson and the Todd families led to a division of the manuscripts, preventing the publication of complete and authoritative editions of Dickinson’s poetry until 70 years after her death. “The noteworthy characteristic of the Dickinson letters, like that of the poems, is acute sensitivity. Indeed, early in the 1860s, when Emily Dickinson seems to have first gained assurance of her destiny as a poet, the letters both in style and rhythm begin to take on qualities that are so nearly the quality of her poems as on occasion to leave the reader in doubt where the letter leaves off and the poem begins? [the letters] are the expression of her unique personality, and of a mind which could phrase the thought, ‘There is always one thing to be grateful for, —that one is one’s self and not somebody else.’ Though she never wrote about herself after her adolescence, the letters nevertheless are always self-portraits, written by one who has observed herself frankly and with no self-pity or regrets” (Johnson, Selected Letters, ix, xv). Lavinia, two years Emily’s junior, died in 1899. “She was indispensable to posterity. Her complete belief in Emily during her life was transferred to the poems after Emily died. Without that belief, which approached fanaticism, we might never have had them” (Sewall, 129). First edition, first issue, without extremely rare dust jackets or publisher’s box. Myerson A3.1a. BAL 4660. Clendenning 53.

Fine condition. Most rare with Lavinia’s card laid in.