Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems

by Emily Dickinson

Other authorsLavinia Greenlaw (Introduction), Jane Lydbury (Illustrator)

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

811.4

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collections

Folio Society books, Poetry & Plays

Publication

Folio Society (2016). 160 pages with 12 integrated wood engravings. Bound in cloth, printed with a design by the artist. Translucent dust jacket (no slipcase). Set in Bembo Book. Printed endpapers. Size: 8¾″ x 5½″.

Description

The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die. Generally considered among the greatest American poets, Emily Dickinson has been read, studied, and admired by generations of literature students and poetry lovers. This modestly priced edition presents over 100 of her best-known and most-loved poems, reprinted from authoritative early editions. Unflinchingly honest, psychologically penetrating, and technically adventurous, the poems include such favorites as "The Chariot," "I taste a liquor never brewed," "The Snake," "I'm nobody, who are you?" "A Book," "There's a certain slant of light," "Hope," and many more.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member iayork

This is not really the edition you want.: I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and

regularized version, a badly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't. In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?
There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.
THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)
THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)
For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:
FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).
Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

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LibraryThing member keylawk

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) left more than 1700 poems still extant, although very few were published during her lifetime. In this volume, a reprint of 109 poems selected from the three posthumous anthologies edited by Mabel Loomis tod and T.W. Higginson.

LibraryThing member dukefan86

I remember some of the poems from high school and college, but others were new to me. Nice collection.

Fewer

Language

English

Original language

English

Local notes

A beautifully presented collection that celebrates the radical style of a visionary American poet. This edition follows the 1955 text prepared by Thomas H. Johnson. More than 170 poems are included here, among them ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers—’, ‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—’ and ‘Because I could not stop for Death—’, as well as lesser-known works.