Emily Dickinson

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 original handwritten poems

Harvard's Emily Dickinson Archive offers free access to the poet's papers from over a dozen libraries, allowing you to see the original drafts of some of her most famous works, sometimes scribbled on envelopes and scraps of paper. (And, even better, you can search the database by typing in your favorite lines!)

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.

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.

The evolution of the em dash, a now-controversial piece of punctuation

The curious form of punctuation was originally used to replicate humans' naturally broken—and sometimes scattered—way of speaking, with Shakespeare often using it in his plays and Emily Dickinson deploying it for numerous effects. But as large language models like ChatGPT began using the em dash, real humans began viewing it as a tell of non-human writing. This podcast episode dives into the strange turn of events.

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.

Analyzing why Dickinson was briefly marketed as a children's poet

In an effort to promote the posthumously published volumes of Dickinson's poetry, her editors positioned the work as children's literature, sometimes even amending the rhyme schemes to be more elementary. This brief look at the misguided marketing tries to understand why it seemed like such a good idea.

How Dickinson's reputation changed in the 20th century

In 1955, Thomas Johnson edited the first complete edition of Dickinson's poetry, using the original handwritten manuscripts as his guide. Unlike previous editors, Johnson allowed Dickinson's unique choices to remain. The collection established her as a singular, innovative voice, a reputation that only continued growing through the decades.

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.