Emily Dickinson
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
All three series. This edition is based on on the first published collection, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson, which was released in three "series", the first of which appeared in 1890. According to Wikipedia, Mabel Loomis Todd "became friends with the Dickinsons, and though she never met Emily Dickinson in person, the two women exchanged letters. After Emily's death in 1886, hundreds of her unpublished poems were discovered. In 1888, Emily's sister Lavinia asked Todd to copy and organize the poems, which were to be sent to the publisher Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The first volume of Poems by Emily Dickinson was published in 1890. This version included many alterations by Todd. In 1896, Todd and the Dickinson family had a falling-out over a legal battle regarding property owned by Austin Dickinson. As a result, Emily Dickinson's manuscripts were split between the two families. In 1945, Todd's daughter Millicent published some of the poems from Todd's portion of the manuscripts."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Poetry for Young People series attempts to straddle the school and trade markets with these two volumes about America's best-known New England poets, but the results are uneven. Frost is superb, the poems introduced in a tone that is informative but not pedantic. Robert Frost's best work is organized into seasonal categories; an italicized gloss for each poem unobtrusively explains references and highlights themes. Sorensen's sketchy watercolors ground each poem in Frost's world of pastures, rose pogonias and yellow woods. Bolin's biographical interpretation of Emily Dickinson, on the other hand, is both coy and condescending. The reader is told, for example, that ``Emily may have seemed to some like a real `nobody' inside she knew she was somebody special.'' Chung's illustrations combine Holly Hobbie-style children with trite ornamentation; a rainbow springs from the center of a lily to accompany ``A word is dead'' while a pea pod containing heart-shaped peas illustrates other verse. Each book includes a brief biography of the poet and a short index. Ages 10-up.
