With special attention to Emily Dickinson's growth into a poet, this literary biographical study charts Dickinson's hard-won brilliance as she worked, largely alone, to become the unique American woman writer of the nineteenth century.

Emily Dickinson, A User’s Guide presents a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of Emily Dickinson, Offers a richly appreciative biographical and critical introduction to America’s most widely admired woman poet Written by a world-renowned Emily Dickinson scholar and American literary critic Represents the only book that reads Dickinson through her manuscripts, the print editions of her work, and the major digital Dickinson editions published since 1994 The User’s Guide is a new kind of book for a new era of reading Is the only book that is an introduction to the poet, her work, and her receptions among readers Is the only book that presents new biography and textual discoveries that have just come to light in 2011 Interprets Dickinson through the dynamic interchange between the reader’s sense of her life and her work Draws on prominent critical views from the past century, including sentimental, modernist, new critical, psychological, feminist, queer, and postmodernist readings

A Study Guide for Emily Dickinson's ‹¨«‹¨«‹¨«‹¨«Because I could not stop for Death," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

One of America's most celebrated women, Emily Dickinson was virtually unpublished in her own time and unknown to the public at large. Yet since the first publication of a limited selection of her poems in 1890, she has emerged as one of the most challenging and rewarding writers of all time. Born into a prosperous family in small town Amherst, Massachusetts, she had an above average education for a woman, attending a private high school and then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, now Mount Holyoke College. Returning to Amherst to her loving family and her "feast" in the reading line, in the 1850s she became increasingly solitary and after the Civil War she spent her life indoors. Despite her cooking and gardening and extensive correspondence, Dickinson's life was strikingly narrow in its social compass. Not so her mind, and on her death in 1886 her sister discovered an astonishing cache of close to eighteen hundred poems. Bitter family quarrels delayed the full publication of Dickinson's "letter to the World," but today her poetry is commonly anthologized and widely praised for its precision, its intensity, its depth and beauty. Dickinson's life and work, however, remain in important ways mysterious. The essays presented here, all of them previously unpublished, provide an overview of Dickinson studies at the start of the twenty-first century. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this collection represents the best of contemporary scholarship and points the way toward exciting new directions for the future. The volume includes a biographical essay that covers some of the major turning points in the poet's life, especially those emphasized by her letters. Other essays discuss Dickinson's religious beliefs, her response to the Civil War, her class-based politics, her place in a tradition of American women's poetry, and the editing of her manuscripts. A Historical Guide to Emily Dickinson concludes with a rich bibliographical essay describing the controversial history of Dickinson's life in print, together with a substantial bibliography of relevant sources.

"In this brilliant and hilarious jailbreak of a novel, Charyn channels the genius poet and her great leaps of the imagination." —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) Jerome Charyn, "one of the most important writers in American literature" (Michael Chabon), continues his exploration of American history through fiction with The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, hailed by prize-winning literary historian Brenda Wineapple as a "breathtaking high-wire act of ventriloquism." Channeling the devilish rhythms and ghosts of a seemingly buried literary past, Charyn removes the mysterious veils that have long enshrouded Dickinson, revealing her passions, inner turmoil, and powerful sexuality. The novel, daringly written in first person, begins in the snow. It's 1848, and Emily is a student at Mount Holyoke, with its mournful headmistress and strict, strict rules. Inspired by her letters and poetry, Charyn goes on to capture the occasionally comic, always fevered, ultimately tragic story of her life-from defiant Holyoke seminarian to dying recluse.