Approximately 100 letters are published here for the first time, including almost all of the letters to Jane Humphrey and to Mrs. J. Howard Sweetser. The new material is even more extensive than it might appear, for many of the letters previously published were censored when first made public. This volume, designed to accompany Mr. Johnson’s previously published work, the widely acclaimed Poems of Emily Dickinson, assembles all of Emily Dickinson’s letters (with the exception of letters presumably destroyed). The editors present the letters chronologically, with manuscript location, previous publication data, and notes for each letter, together with a general introduction, and biographical notes on recipients of letters.

The notes for each letter identify persons and events mentioned, and the source of literary allusions and quotations is given wherever known. Since Emily Dickinson rarely dated her letters after 1850, the dates for the most part must be conjectured from careful study of handwriting changes and from internal evidence of the letters. Of the 1,150 letters and prose fragments included in this outstanding edition, the text of about 800 derives from Dickinson autographs.

• CONTENTS 
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• NOTES ON THE PRESENT TEXT
• SYMBOLS USED TO IDENTIFY MANUSCRIPTS
• SYMBOLS USED TO IDENTIFY PUBLICATION
• LETTERS
• I 
• “… the Hens lay finely …” LETTERS 1–14 [1842–1846]
• II 
• “I am really at Mt Holyoke …”LETTERS 15–26 [1847–1848]
• III 
• “Amherst is alive with fun this winter …” LETTERS 27–39 [1849–1850]
• IV 
• “… we do not have much poetry, father having made up his mind that its pretty much all real life.” LETTERS 40–176 [1851–1854]
• V 
• “To live, and die, and mount again in triumphant body … is no schoolboy's theme I” LETTERS 177–186 [1855–1857]
• VI 
• “Much has occurred … so much — that I stagger as I write, in its sharp remembrance.”LETTERS 187–245 [1858–1861]
• VII 
• “Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that — My Business is Circumference.” LETTERS 246–313 [1862–1865]
• VIII 
• “A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.” LETTERS 314–337 [1866–1869]
• IX 
• “I find ecstasy in living — the mere sense of living is joy enough.” LETTERS 338–431 [1870–1874]
• X 
• “Nature is a Haunted House — but Art – a House that tries to be haunted.” LETTERS 432–626 [1875–1879]
• XI 
• “I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few and each must be the chiefest …” LETTERS 627–878 [1880–1883]
• XII 
• “… a Letter is a joy of Earth — it is denied the Gods.”LETTERS 879–1045 [1884–1886]
• PROSE FRAGMENTS
• APPENDIXES
• 1. 
• Biographical Sketches of Recipients of Letters and of Persons Mentioned in Them
• 2. 
• A Note on the Domestic Help
• 3. 
• Recipients of Letters
• INDEX
• INDEX OF POEMS