POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON C, Ci Ci CI C Ci i C Stf Poems Iry EMILY
DICKINSON EDITED BY MARTHA DICKINSON BIANCHI AND ALFRED LEETE
HAMPSON Introduction y ALFRED LEETE HAMPSON C E A BROWN AND 1948
INTRODUCTION JC MILY DICKINSON was born December loth, 1830, lived
her life apart, and died May I5th, 1886, in the same little college
town of Amherst, among the Massachusetts hills, where her
grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson a poet and mystic of another
sort had ruined himself for the materializing of his apocalyptic
vision the founding of Amherst College, which he foresaw as an
agency to hasten the conversion of the whole world. Unknown during
her lifetime, held by an intimate public in peculiar affection
after her death as her first posthumous publications reached an
outside world, later neglected for many years by public and critics
alike and classified in 1912 as a forgotten poetess, her present
eminence is a special triumph, unique in the annals of American
letters. Though her period coincided with the Golden Era of New
England literature, her fame, as pure poet, has outgrown that of
every contempo rary. l She seems to many of us the greatest Ameri
can poet of the Nineteenth Century. 2 A modern of moderns in 1936,
critics on both sides of the Atlantic do not hesitate now to call
her poetry, wholly underiva tive, the finest by a woman in the
English language. Her influence, negligible at first, is now
incalculable. By inheritance Emily Dickinson was the quintessence
of New England. Of Norman origin, the name de-1 American Literature
f An Introduction p. 68. Carl Van Doren. Neiv York Herald Tribune,
September 27, 1936. XIII p. 6. Lewis Gannett. 8 Modern American
Poetry fifth revisededition. Louis Untermeyer. riving from Gautier
of Caen anglicized as Walter de Kenson who accompanied William the
Conqueror in the invasion of England, her first Colonial an cestor
was the picturesque and indomitable Nathaniel, whose spirit of
adventure as well as his Puritan political convictions led him to
set sail in 1630, with his wife Anna, the widow Gull, for the wilds
of America, seeking not conquest or dominion, but free dom and the
right to serve, at the dictation of his own conscience, his God
before his King With a few others, they soon struck out for the
hinter land, leaving the comparative security and companion ship of
the coast settlements which retained, bleak out posts though they
were, a tenuous connection with their old world, and eventually
established the town of old Hadley, Massachusetts, some of their
descendants cross ing the Connecticut river to occupy the district
later called Amherst. Faced by primeval conditions of in credible
hardship, surrounded by wild beasts and In dians, these
uncompromising idealists wrought out their own Colonial history in
blood and shining courage. Just two hundred years lay between the
birth of Emily Dickinson and the coming of her first ancestor from
England. She shared with the other children of her village the
prevailing traditions and standards of her time. Her father,
educated at Yale, followed the family profession of law, served in
the State Legislature and also in Congress, and was Treasurer of
Amherst College for nearly forty years. Although habitually
reserved in manner, he evidenced the marked individu ality and love
of independence characteristic of the Dick insons from the
beginning, as well as under provoca tion theirproclivity for vivid
and original expression. If Father is asleep on the lounge the
house is full, Emily exclaimed. It revealed their fundamental under
standing...
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