The Influence of Nineteenth-Century British Writers on Emily Dickinson: A Study of Her Library and Letters

This is a rare study of the letters and family books of Emily Dickinson from Amherst College and Harvard University libraries revealing Dickinson's poetic development, through her correspondence and reference to works of British writers and their influence on her work. This work proves her place in the canon of nineteenth-century literature is well-deserved. Emily Dickinson's letters have been neglected somewhat in her scholarship, as have nineteenth-century British writers despite the fact they are mentioned more in her letters than their American contemporaries. Led by these references, I examined the copies of the family books held at the Frost Library, Amherst College and in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. The examination of the texts and close readings of Dickinson's letters and poems shows that she formed a literary coterie made up of books to which she turned for inspiration. Written as a study to complement Karl Keller's The Only Kangaroo Among the Beauty (1979), this study reinforces Dickinson's place within the canon of 19th Century American writing. Keller reads Dickinson through American authors from Anne Bradstreet to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He succeeds in explicating Dickinson's relationship with these authors to show their importance in her evolution as a "vernacular poet." Because Dickinson's poetry seems to be unconventional at times, readers and critics have begrudgingly placed her within the canon of the nineteenth-century' I will show in the following chapters that she belongs there firmly.