Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete

Poems by Emily Dickinson collects the three series of her poetry published posthumously between 1890 and 1896, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This complete edition brings together nearly six hundred poems by one of the most original voices in American literature.

Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems during her lifetime but published only a handful. Working in near-total seclusion in Amherst, Massachusetts, she developed a startlingly modern style — compressed, elliptical, punctuated by her signature dashes — that was decades ahead of its time. Her subjects range from death and immortality to nature, love, pain, and the inner life of the mind. “Because I could not stop for Death — / He kindly stopped for me” is among the most quoted lines in English poetry.

Though the early editors altered some of her unconventional punctuation and word choices, these poems revealed Dickinson’s genius to the world and established her as one of the greatest poets in the English language. Her influence on modern poetry is immeasurable.