Introduction: Reading Dickinson Contextually

Whatever else Dickinson intended in leaving at least forty hand-bound books for our “delight” (and we must begin with the qualification that we cannot know what she intended them to be), they are quite simply the most important clue she provided for reading the poems within them. They are Dickinson’s own context. Outside of this context for over one hundred years the individual flowers, the lyrics of Emily Dickinson, have been quoted, queried, quarreled with, used for sermon fodder, and analyzed for psychological, philosophical, cultural, historical, and, most temptingly, autobiographical import. They have been “improved” upon by early editors and