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Article: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Variorum ed.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Women's Review of Books
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Old City Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Edited by R. W. Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, 3 vols., 1654 pp., $125.00 hardcover.
For complex reasons, Emily Dickinson chose not to become a published poet during her lifetime. A leading theory suggests that she knew that her wildness would be tamed if she sang aloud in her own day and age and that she preferred what she once called her "Barefoot-Rank" to the norms of print. How, then, can anyone edit Dickinson while remaining true to her intentions? Can she be edited without being domesticated? Can she be edited without being censored?
When Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55 in May 1886, she left her poems untitled and ...