Emily Dickenson (1830 - 1886) said that she was most influenced by
the poetry of Keats and the Brownings and the prose of John Ruskin
and Thomas Browne.
People read Emily Dickenson's poems and letters (she frequently wrote to
the minister, reformer, and essayist Thomas Wentworth Higginson).
There is no complete works edition. This is a summary of
what's out there, so you can decide what meets your needs.
(Blue phrases are book store links.)
The editions available from various publishers are selected poems in
paperback
or
hardcover
,
a volume of complete poems in
paperback
or
hardcover
, a book of
selected letters
, and a book of
selected poems and letters
.
The volume in the Essential Poets series,
entitled The Essential Dickenson , is the one that contains
the selected poems. Despite the abridgement, it does contain a
critically acclaimed analytical and biographical introduction by
Joyce Carol Oates.
Dickenson's poems are numbered rather than titled, and they
sometimes appear in more than one revision. For this reason
The Essential Dickenson contains 117 poems, but 116 unique
poem numbers; i.e., it includes Poem #216 written in 1859 in
addition to Poem #216 as revised in 1861.
117 poems may sound like a lot, but it isn't, because some Emily
Dickenson poems are only four lines or so:
The pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee --
A Clover, any time, to him,
is Aristocracy --
#1627, version 2, by Emily Dickenson
Due to the short lengths, even with 117 poems, the The
Essential Dickenson is only 94 pages, even though it usually
costs about half what the huge Complete Poems costs.
My recommendation : If you just want the poems and not the
letters, go with the massive Complete Poems (784 pages).
The other editions don't take enough off the price, considering
how much they have omitted. If you do decide to go for the
Complete Poems , naturally the
paperback
is cheaper than the
hardcover
.
There's also a biography :
The Life of Emily Dickinson , by Richard Benson Sewall
.
At the bottom of this page is a summary of all the Amazon.com
books links I have mentioned.