Recurring Women

Danny Karlin

  • The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition edited by R.W. Franklin
    Harvard, 1654 pp, £83.50, October 1998, ISBN 0 674 67622 X
  • The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition edited by R.W. Franklin
    Harvard, 692 pp, £19.95, September 1999, ISBN 0 674 67624 6
  • Emily Dickinson: Monarch of Perception by Domhnall Mitchell
    Massachusetts, 352 pp, £31.95, March 2000, ISBN 1 55849 226 7

Publication – is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man –

(#788)

Editing Emily Dickinson’s poetry is a problem which continues to vex literary scholars and textual critics; meanwhile the publication, or dissemination, of Dickinson goes on apace. A trivial instance: the giant puppet of the ‘Belle of Amherst’, dressed in that distinctive ghost-white dress, which features in the movie Being John Malkovich. A hitherto ‘unknown’ photograph of Dickinson recently advertised on E-Bay, the Internet auction site. Shady dealings in allegedly ‘new’ poems by Dickinson – discovered, authenticated, sold and discredited. I recently received a flyer advertising Edie Campbell’s one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe, in which the actress ‘wants to be Emily’s mouthpiece’: My Life Has Stood: The Journey of a Portrayal unfolds with Campbell onstage, sewing the dress in which she is to portray Dickinson, while ‘delving into the very fibre of her poems and letters’. Dickinson’s murmur has been sent over the roofs of the world, just as emphatically as Whitman’s barbaric yawp. But not by her. Even Coriolanus was forced to stand in the street and show his wounds; but Dickinson was a greater despiser of the people.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions