Cover
Half-title
Series-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Note and abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Life
The Dickinson family
A portrait of the poet as a young girl
Early ambitions, difficult changes
Preceptors
"Sister Sue"
A "Woman
white
to be"
Chapter 2 Context
Religious culture: Puritanism, the Great Awakenings, and revivals
Industrialization and the individual
Political culture: expansion and the antebellum period
Social movements: Abolition and women's rights
Philosophical reactions: Transcendentalism
The Civil War
Chapter 3 Works
Sweeping with many-colored brooms: the influence of the domestic
Blasphemous devotion: biblical allusion in the poems and letters
"Easy, quite, to love": friendship and love in Dickinson's life and works
"The Heaven
below": nature poems
"A Riddle, at the last": death and immortality
Chapter 4 Reception
"The Auction Of the Mind": publication history
Editing the poems and letters
Early reception
New Criticism
Dickinson's legacy today
Notes
1 Life
2 Context
3 Works
4 Reception
Guide to further reading
Index
Last Page.