Letters of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, with
an introduc- tion by Mark Van Doren. (Gollancz. 21s.)
EMILY DICKINSON was born at Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She died there, eccentric and wholly withdrawn from the world, in 1886. She published nothing while she lived, and no full edition of the letters appeared until 1931. Even more than her poetry, they are an acquired taste. • This volume is a reprint of the 1894 edition of the Letters: In it, Miss Todd suppressed much personal matter, including all reference to the love felt by Emily Dickinson for one of her correspondents, although that love was the mainspring of her finest verse. This volume, therefore, is in no sense definitive ; but it possesses what Walter Pater would have called a gem-like quality. The letters were composed as carefully as the poems, and the art was as carefully concealed : "-Vinnie would send her love, but she put on her white frock and went to meet tomorrow." At its best the style somewhat extends the conventional pattern of the language ; but there are times when it appears cryptic and perverse. It was the unusual and often brilttain instrument of one who liQed with
strange intensity alone. P. M.
Previous page
