Browse Emily Dickinson's original handwritten poems

Read the poetry of Emily Dickinson

Dickinson wrote about 1,800 poems during her life, though the bulk of them weren't published until after her death in 1886. This collection from the Academy of American Poets brings together many of her most important (but untitled) works, which you can search by their first lines.

Browse Emily Dickinson's collection of plant life

The poet began collecting plant life as a teen and assembling a herbarium, a collection of dried and pressed plants. The original book is housed in Harvard's rare book collection, but you can view digital scans of every page through the university's digital library.

The significance of Emily Dickinson's many personal letters

The first editors of Dickinson's posthumous collection of poetry heavily amended her work, making her private letters and drafts more valuable for what many perceive to be her more raw, unadulterated voice. Cristanne Miller, the editor of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson," discusses their importance and why so many of them were destroyed after Dickinson's death.

Why Emily Dickinson's poetry remains popular in the 21st century

Dickinson remains widely read and is often considered one of American literature's greatest poets. This short documentary from PBS uses a 2017 museum exhibition on the writer to explore her long-lasting impact, with input from Barbara Howe, a contemporary poet, and Marta Werner, a Dickinson scholar.

Listen to 3 scholars discuss the work of Emily Dickinson

Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, and Paraic Finnerty—three British academics who study Dickinson—discuss the poet's life, distinctive writing style, and impact on the generations who followed, illustrating that part of Dickinson's appeal lies in her open-ended verse, which invites readers' many interpretations.

Characterizing Emily Dickinson's distinctive poetic style

Dickinson's poems are generally short, untitled works that are lyrical, which means they seek to express feelings rather than narrate stories. They're also infused with common meter, a rhythm used in much popular music, and deploy frequent dashes as both punctuation and an idiosyncratic poetic device.

Emily Dickinson was a prolific baker

Dickinson scholars have collected her recipes for gingerbread, doughnuts, and more, noting that she often wrote poems on the backs of them. The Emily Dickinson Museum says that the kitchen "was a space of creative ferment for her, and that the writing of poetry mixed in her life with the making of delicate treats."

A comprehensive biography of Emily Dickinson, the influential American poet

This deep dive into Dickinson's biography includes a fascinating anecdote about her time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary—where she was distinguished from the "established Christians" and deemed "without hope"—as well as the significance of her correspondence with close friend Susan Gilbert, one of her primary readers and eventual sister-in-law.

Why Emily Dickinson's poems were heavily edited after her death

Mabel Loomis Todd worked alongside Dickinson's confidant, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to publish the first volumes of Dickinson's poems in 1890 and 1891. They removed many of the poem's idiosyncrasies, including their dashes, and created titles where Dickinson had provided none.

Breaking down how Dickinson viewed letters as an extension of her poetry

The poet's many correspondences were dashed with playful arrangements of text, offering her pen pals surprises once they opened their envelopes. Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith explain how Dickinson even creatively used the 19th-century security technique of letterlocking in poetic ways.

Why one Emily Dickinson biographer believed she had epilepsy

Lyndall Gordon's "Lives Like Loaded Guns" points to a "handicap" referenced in several Dickinson poems. According to Gordon, the condition was so stigmatized during Dickinson's life that it made her reclusive. In this NPR interview, Gordon explains why she believes the theory is the best explanation for Dickinson's notorious isolation.

How Emily Dickinson poetically deployed the em dash

Dickinson had many purposes for dashes in her poems: Sometimes they serve rhythm, sometimes they reflect the naturally fragmented way we tend to speak, and sometimes they are a simple artistic choice. This quick explainer breaks down how dashes work grammatically and how they operate in some of Dickinson's verses.

Browse the original 'Walden' manuscripts

Henry David Thoreau began writing the book about his time living at Walden Pond in 1846, but it went through seven iterations before being published in 1854. You can look through scans of early proofs, including some of Thoreau's handwritten corrections, through the Huntington Digital Library.

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

How Taylor Swift is related to poet Emily Dickinson

In 2024, genealogy site Ancestry.com claimed that the pop star and the poet were descended from a 17th-century English immigrant, Swift's ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson's sixth great-grandfather. That would make Swift and Dickinson sixth cousins, three times removed.

Explore over 46,000 pages of Charles Darwin's manuscripts

The American Museum of Natural History hosts almost 35,000 digitized folios related to evolution within the fields of botany and zoology from Darwin's Beagle voyage. High-resolution color images, geological findings, and annotated books from Darwin's personal library are also viewable.

Read the works of Charles Dickens

Dickens' work has long been in the public domain, meaning it's freely available to readers. Project Gutenberg's collection of Dickens' novels allows you to read classic novels like "Oliver Twist" and "A Tale of Two Cities," as well as early works like "Sketches by Boz," at no cost.

Browse a collection of Harlem Renaissance poetry

This guide from the Poetry Foundation walks you through the movement's major poems, including works by writers like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, James Weldon Johnson, and more. Helpfully, it's organized them into four major eras, allowing you to analyze the movement's steady evolution.

Blake's 'illuminated manuscripts' blended poetry and painting

Blake's poetry was often accompanied by the author's complementary illustrations. They’re masterful works of art, pieces that were unlike anything else in Blake’s time—or in ours. Thankfully, The William Blake Archive has scanned all of the original manuscripts, allowing you to see the majestic books in their entirety.

A computational analysis of Jane Austen's writing

Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln translated Austen's novels into code to analyze her diction, then published their findings in a searchable database. Users can explore all six of her novels, analyzing the unique words used by her characters and the narrative techniques she employs.

An archive of anonymous messages people wrote but never sent

The site invites users to submit unsent letters to people, pets, or moments, which are then published anonymously for strangers to read. Every post is moderated, and the design of the site—no likes or replies, just words—feels polished and somber.

See a collection of Mary Cassatt's artwork

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's digital collection includes 15 of Cassatt's works, including several iconic watercolors, like "Portrait of the Artist" and "Mother Playing with Child." Alongside them, you can read helpful contextual information assembled by Cassatt scholar H Barbara Weinberg.

Memorabilia from Hitchcock's career is archived and known as the 'Alfred Hitchcock Papers'

The Alfred Hitchcock Papers are part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy Collection, the world’s largest film-related archive. The collection consists of more than 52 million items, including photographs, posters, screenplays, costumes, props, and the films themselves.

You can read First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' will online

Unlike trusts, the contents of a will are public information. Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's will included her copy of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address signed by Robert Frost and other fascinating historic objects.

Explore a database of ancient graffiti

Take a look at thousands of pieces of graffiti from the walls of Herculaneum and Pompeii, including name tags, crude jokes, and crude drawings. The database, maintained by classical scholars, allows you to explore maps of the cities and images of the original inscriptions.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

Poison ivy's rash-causing compound is found in the plant's roots, stem, and leaves—so coming into contact with any part of the plant can lead to rashes for the 85% of people who are allergic to it.