For the first time, selections from Emily Dickinson's thirty-six year correspondence with her childhood friend, neighbor, and sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, are compiled in a single volume. Open Me Carefully invites a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship and misinterpretation. For the millions of readers who love Emily Dickinson's poetry, Open Me Carefully brings new light to the meaning of the poet's life and work. Gone is Emily as lonely spinster; here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive.
"With spare commentary, Smith... and Hart... let these letters speak for themselves. Most important, unlike previous editors who altered line breaks to fit their sense of what is poetry or prose, Hart and Smith offer faithful reproductions of the letters' genre-defying form as the words unravel spectacularly down the original page." Renee Tursi, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Author Biography
Emily Dickinson is the great and iconic American poet. She lived in Amherst, MA and was largely unrecognized during her lifetime. Her poems are as original in form and subject today as when she wrote them. Ellen Louise Hart is the author of articles on editing Emily Dickinson that have appeared in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Emily Dickinson Journal, An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, The Women's Review of Books, and The Heath Anthology of American Literature. She teaches writing and literature at Portland Community College in Oregon. Martha Nell Smith is Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Professor of English, and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. Her numerous print publications include five singly and coauthored books, including Emily Dickinson, A User's Guide, Companion to Emily Dickinson, and Rowing in Eden.
