Customer Reviews

The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Variorum Edition)

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Now there are two readers' editions of Emily Dickinson's poems that are usable for close readings and scholarship. By usable, I mean that the texts--note the word "texts"--are close to what Emily Dickinson wanted them to be. The earlier Thomas H. Johnson text has been an acceptable and competent version since it was published in 1955. Johnson's readers' edition-the one without all the scholarly apparatus-contains 1775 poems. (In the same year Belknap Press of Harvard University Press issued his three-volume variorum of all the known poems.) This is cool. This new version of Emily Dickinson poems was edited by R.W. Franklin, and the readers' edition was published in 1999. It contains 1789 poems-unfortunately with a different numbering than Johnson--based, we are told, on probable date of composition. Franklin also edited a fresh variorum edition also published by Belknap Press of Harvard. I am boring you with all of this detail to tell you that although the Johnson texts are good texts if you are serious about Dickinson--meaning if you actually care about what she wrote on the page--the Franklin will give accurate texts and is the new authority. F.W. Franklin has been working since the '60's on details where Johnson perhaps lacked information and insight. He knows whereof he speaks, and he has done his utmost to reassemble Ms. Dickinson's original manuscripts in their proper order. Previous versions of the poems--those before Johnson and Franklin--regularized rhyme and otherwise abrogated the accuracy of the poems. They were cleaned up according to late 19th century standards, and the texts--despite editorial comments to the contrary--are corrupt. That means that they are inaccurate. In conclusion, if you want Emily Dickinson with accuracy--despite the rapturous testimony of some reviewers of other presentations of the poems--go for the Johnson or Franklin texts. Franklin is most current and should be impeccable. Other texts, including some that are in supposedly respectable American literature anthologies, may be suspect. (One of the most respectable uses texts that derive from late 19th century texts that were declared corrupt some 40 years ago.)

Emily Dickinson finally has an edition of her poems that she fully deserves. As many readers know, many of her poems were left with variations in words and phrases. Sometimes, whole poems exist in completely different versions -- but the problem is that a "final" form for some poems is not as easy as it might seem since Dickinson herself left many variations on words and phrases without favouring a particular one! One could say that "final" versions for many of her poems simply do not exist. The Johnson edition (the old "definitive" edition) of the complete poems makes choices for the reader -- choices which, unfortunately, are not always the best. This new edition presents the poetry with all the variations intact, so that the reader could choose for him/herself a particular reading when Dickinson herself did not leave a final preference. This new edition is a *must* for anyone who loves Dickinson's poetry (such as myself) -- and it emphasizes just how rich and imaginative Dickinson's use of language really is. Dump your Johnson edition for recycling, folks. This is the definitive edition, worth every penny (and then some) of its rather high price.

If you know Dickinson's compositional method -- with almost no publication in her lifetime, often with many versions of one poem, and with poetic significance altered by the paper and exact handwriting -- you will recognize that any printed edition of her work cannot be perfect. Still, Franklin has worked with care, intelligence, scholarship, and order on finding the best renditions of her poems, and these are those. If you learn to love her, you may want the hardback! Her "little" lyrics are a joy forever, and you may wear out your copy.

The readers' edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson provides a condensed and affordable alternative to the three-volume variorum edition, also published by Belknap. It contains the same number of poems, but omits the alternate versions and contextual notes Franklin includes in the variorum. I prefer this edition of Dickinson's poetry to the 1955 edition edited by Thomas Johnson because it includes several poems the earlier one didn't, and because Franklin seems to have a better handle on transcribing Emily Dickinson's sometimes confusing handwriting than Johnson did. This collection is a good acquisition for anyone planning to study Dickinson, or anyone who wants to read her poems in their original, non-Victorianized form. Her original spelling and punctuation lend even more character to her already intriguing poems, so reading them this way is an experience I would definitely recommend.

READERS SHOULD NOTE that this is a review of the following THOMAS H. JOHNSON edition, and not of the R. W. Franklin 3-volume Variorum or other editions under which it has been mistakenly placed by Amazon (I have therefore added some comments about the Franklin at the end):

Thomas H. Johnson, Editor. THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, INCLUDING VARIANT READINGS CRITICALLY COMPARED WITH ALL KNOWN MANUSCRIPTS. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, nd. [A single-volume reprint of the original 1955 3-vol. edition]. ISBN 0-674-67601-7 HBK.

Prior to the appearance of Johnson's great variorum edition of Emily Dickinson in 1955, an edition which was the first to offer readers accurate texts of her complete poems, it was not possible to arrive at a just estimation of her tremendous achievement, an achievement that places her at the forefront of the ranks of the world's greatest poets. Because of the highly idiosyncratic nature of her poems, all earlier editors had felt obliged, to some extent or other, and in order to make them more acceptable to the public, to normalize them by adding titles, smoothing her rhymes, changing words, regularizing punctuation, and relineating them; some editors even went so far as to remove entire stanzas. It becomes a tribute to the power of her poems that, despite this savage treament they somehow survived, and there are many readers, even today, who have grown to love these mutilated versions without ever realizing just how far removed they are from her originals.

Although Johnson himself wasn't entirely free of the slash-and-burn approach to ED's texts - since he apparently felt that readers weren't yet ready for the peculiar lineation that we find in Emily Dickinson's own handwritten versions of the poems - he should nevertheless be credited with having brought the worst of it to an end, and for having given us texts that are closer to the originals than ever before. He is also to be credited with having established an approximate chronological order for the 1775 poems in his edition, and for having provided us with a convenient way of referring to these untitled poems by giving each of them a number, the well-known 'Johnson numbers' which are still standard today. Each numbered poem has been transcribed exactly as it is found in the manuscripts, though with his editorial choice of variant and with lineation normalized. Below each poem comes a list of variants, information about the poem's manuscript source/s, and its publication history. The poems are preceded by 70 pages of Introductory material, which include 20 pages of very interesting photographic facsimiles in illustration of ED's varied writing styles, and the book is rounded out with an Appendix, a Subject Index, and an Index of First Lines.

The single-volume version is an undated reprint of the original 1955 3-volume edition, and is a substantial book of over 1300 pages weighing in at a hefty 4lbs plus. Given the fantastic price of the book, I was amazed to discover that, although bound in full cloth, instead of the pages being sewn in signatures it has been given a glued spine which is nowhere near strong enough to hold the weight of all these pages. Although I'm pretty careful with books, the brand-new copy I examined split at the spine the first time I opened it. Anyone who is interested in the Johnson variorum would be well advised to search for a copy of the much better produced earlier and stitched 3-volume version. Although the present book deserves more than 5 stars for its content, it deserves far less for its poor physical makeup.

As a contribution to scholarship, Johnson's variorum was a magnificent achievement for its time, and helped greatly in establishing Emily Dickinson's reputation. But much has come to light since 1955, and R. W. Franklin's richer 1998 variorum (which unlike the Johnson provides details of the original lineation) may now be said to have superseded it. Details of the Franklin variorum are as follows:

R. W. Franklin, Editor. THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : VARIORUM EDITION. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-674-67622X HBK.

R. W. FRANKLIN'S 3-volume Variorum differs from Thomas H. Johnson's earlier 1955 Variorum in essential ways, but most significantly in that it has added 14 poems to the total corpus, thereby bringing the total from Johnson's 1,775 to 1,789 poems. This, and the re-dating of certain poems whose dates could never be established with certainty, has led to a re-numbering of the poems which, although a Franklin-to-Johnson number conversion table is included, is very inconvenient since most writing about Emily Dickinson remains keyed to Johnson's earlier numbering.

Franklin's scholarly apparatus is extremely technical, and his approach throughout is thoroughly scientific, with one significant exception: all poems have been normalized (i.e., ED's own lineation has been ignored). As a substitute for the original shapes of the poems, footnotes indicating "Division" (line-breaks) have been given. Consequently, reconstructing the original shape of the poems in one's mind can be rather tiresome since it requires constant recourse to the Division notes.

Despite these two weaknesses, however, the Franklin, with its accurate texts and full scholarly apparatus which gives provenance, notes indicating line-breaks, variants, publishing history, etc., is an impressive achievement and as as essential reference work it will undoubtedly find many important uses. The three volumes are beautifully produced, bound in half cloth, stitched for durability, well-printed on excellent paper, and a joy to handle.

This is an excellent book for anyone who LOVES Emily Dickinson. Although it does not contain all the different versions of her poems, it is comprehensively edited to have the version of each known poem that is believed to be Dickinson's most complete and revised. This edition also seem to have the most complete collection of poems--1,789-- compared to the other "complete poems". However, if you are looking for an edition for studious reasons, this edition does have different numbering for the poems than the ones usually used (the editor claims them to be in the most accurate chronological order possible).
The binding of this book is VERY nice and has its own ribbon for marking pages. Definitely a nice book.

I was excited (not to mention naive) to think I could get the Franklin ed. of Dickinson's poetry for a mere 99 cents. But then I saw that the ed. is only the old Todd-Higginson, which is free elsewhere. I would pay, say, 10 bucks for the Franklin, but it's apparently not available for Kindle. Shame. Neither is the slightly less authoritative Johnson ed. from the '50s. It's sad that, by and large, the Dickinson most people read and have read--in books, websites, and now e-readers--is bad versions of her poetry. Emily liked the dashes above all, and Higginson, among others, arrogantly "corrected" Emily's poetry for her, since she was not a "professional poet." Well, no one needs (or needed) to "correct" Dickinson's poems for her. They are very great, almost all 1800 of them. They are little gems, filled with wonder, elliptical diction, symbols that work in multiple ways, doubts, love for nature, love for love, and a great working knowledge of the ideas (and pop culture) of her day. So get with it, somebody, give us Kindle readers the Dickinson we deserve! What we have now is fine for someone living in 1900, but we are, or should be, beyond that.

This book is the poorest quality publishing I've ever seen. There are at least a dozen typos/type-setting mistakes in the first two pages. It is not paginated properly nor is there any space between the poems. It is a messy piece of junk. I will never purchase another book from General Books. After looking at the fine print carefully I now see it has a disclaimer which states that the publisher used OCR software in the publishing. Buyer Beware. I wish I had known.

How do you begin to review the complete poems of Emily Dickinson? Reading beginning-to-end, every line of every poem is the very best way to encounter her, and this edition the best way to undertake the adventure. She has so many dimensions that just when you think you're beginning to understand her well, she shows you another facet, a new side. Having plummeted into the sea of her verse and become dripping wet, I invite you to do likewise. Life is filled with little surprises, and one of the greatest for me has been Emily Dickinson's couplets, short little two-line poems. Here's one that I nominate for winner in the category "best short love poem in English:" "Least rivers - docile to some sea.// My Caspian - thee." (206)

My advice is don't be overly swayed by focusing on the poems you and the world already know well: e.g. "Because I could not stop for death" and others. Try focusing on some you may never have seen before. In case you are wondering, I'm no relation to Emily Dickinson--just a kindred spirit!

This edition offers a great insight into the poetry of Emily Dickinson. As a lover of her poetry her distinctive voice can truly be heard through her original spellings and punctuation. The editor has done an excellent job of preserving the vibrant and powerful soul of this incredible American poet.