“I’m glad there are books. they are better than heaven, because that is unavoidable, while one can overlook these.” – Emily Dickinson to F. b. sanborn, about 1873 (l402)
For Emily Dickinson books were vehicles of the imagination – she defined them variously in poems as a “Frigate,” a “Bequest of Wings,” and “the Chariot / That bears the Human soul,” while those she loved best became her “Kinsmen of the Shelf.” She was born into a book-loving household and became a voracious reader who read widely, well beyond the well-stocked libraries of the Homestead and her brother Austin’s home next door.
In his childhood, in addition to his schoolbooks, he read the Bible, and his parents and relatives gave him carefully selected Sabbath school stories, mainly moralistic. Some time later, a young man studying in her father’s law office slipped one of Lydia Maria Child’s historical novels into the hands of the Dickinson Children. “This then is a book! and there are more of them”, was her exultant reply (l342b). his youth was the height of the romantic literary era, with washington irving and sir walter scott, byron and wordsworth, longfellow and tennyson at the height of popularity, not to mention dickens novels and a host of minor novelists whose titles are now forgotten. they provided popular children’s readings. In 1848, the Brontës’ novels ushered in a new era of psychological fiction, largely written by women, that captured Dickinson’s sensibility and, in turn, initiated her particular love of the works of the poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the novelist george eliot.
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in his early twenties, talking about books was dickinson’s business with the amherst students and tutors who were his friends and among whom he circulated books by thomas de fifteeny, nathaniel hawthorne, thomas carlyle and the german novelist jean paul richter. Dickinson belonged to a young Amherst reading group who tackled reading Shakespeare aloud, and she was introduced to Emerson’s work through her first book of poems, a gift from her mentor Benjamin Franklin Newton. Early adulthood friendships, such as that of Amherst student Henry Vaughn Emmons, extended her knowledge of and access to her books beyond the shelves of her own home. while her father might prefer “lonely & amp; rigorous books” (l342a) and despises the authors that her oldest daughter preferred as “modern literati” (l113), it seems that she always bought the books that she asked for.
additionally, dickinson kept abreast of current events through daily reading of the springfield republican, perhaps the best political and literary newspaper in new england. He read every issue of his sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson’s subscription to the Atlantic Monthly, as well as perusing a variety of other periodicals that came to the farm, so that his gradual seclusion in no way interfered with knowing what what was going on in the house. world, particularly the world of books.
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of all the literature that dickinson devoured, the only book he returned to over and over again was the king james bible. she read and reread it, often quoting it from memory. his stories and characters appeared frequently in his letters and poems, sometimes through the most adroit references. he once told a friend that all literature could pass for the bible and shakespeare.
A vital ally in the poet’s love of books, Susan Dickinson was an amazing book buyer for her time and equally enamored with Brownings, Tennyson, Ruskin and other Romantics. she sue she liked religious philosophers, such as francis quarles and thomas à kempis, books that also became essential for the poet. susan and emily shared her sue’s library; Marking her favorite passages with light pencil strokes provides a guide to the books and authors’ ideas that interested them most.
Today, the Dickinson House Libraries are owned by two major universities. Many books on the farm are in the Houghton Library at Harvard, and most of the ones on Evergreens are in the John Hay Library at Brown. The museum has launched a program, called “replenishing the shelves,” to replace the hundreds of 19th-century titles that once occupied the family shelves and were important to the poet and members of her family.
further reading:
caps, jack. Emily Dickinson Reading 1836-1886. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1966.
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sewall, richard b. the life of emily dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974. See especially Chapter 28, “Books and Reading,” 668-705.
heginbotham, eleanor. “‘What Are You Reading Now?’: The Emily Dickinson Epistolary Book Club”. Reading Emily Dickinson’s Letters: Critical Essays. eds. Eberwein, Jane Donahue, Cindy Mackenzie, and Marietta Messmer. amherst, ma: u of massachusetts p, 2009. xiii, 293 pp. print.
deppman, jed. “Across the Dark Lawn: Trying to Read with Emily Dickinson”. Trying to Think with Emily Dickinson, 150-83. University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk41f.10.
finnerty, paraic. “Shakespeare Always and Forever”: The Circulation of Dickinson’s Bard. in emily dickinson’s shakespeare, 117-39. University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk963.10.
miller, cristina. reading in time: emily dickinson in the nineteenth century. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
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