Emily Dickinson left an enduring literary legacy nearly 2,000 poems yet she was so intensely private that her life is sometimes seen as one of solitary devotion to the muse. The portraits, engravings, maps, and other illustrations in The World of Emily Dickinson attest to a much broader life than is commonly thought. Polly Longsworth's graceful introductory essay portrays a young woman of unusual intelligence and wit meeting the world on her own terms, engaging with people, ideas, natural phenomena, and her nineteenth-century culture, while choosing to keep her distance from the public eye....
Emily Dickinson left an enduring literary legacy nearly 2,000 poems yet she was so intensely private that her life is sometimes seen as one of solitar...