Was Emily Dickinson’s refusal to publish an attempt to avoid fame?

Or an attempt to avoid
criticism?

IB History Internal Assessment

Word count: 1569

PART B: Investigation

Considering how famous Emily Dickenson is for her work, it could naturally be assumed that she

became famous on purpose. That is not the case. Her dying wish was to have all her poems destroyed and

never released publicly. Her family ignored that wish and published her work away. Dickinson died in

1886 and her first poems were not published until 1890. She refused to have her works printed throughout

her lifetime, instead creating handwritten copies when distributed. Emily Dickinson’s resistance to

publish her works could possibly be rooted in a fear of fame or a fear over being criticized.

In Why Dickinson Did Not Publish,1 Karen A. Dandurand asserts that Dickinson’s refusal to

publish was simply to avoid any sort of fame that might arise from doing so. One unique decision

Dickinson made was exactly how she chose to share her work. She would handwrite each copy of

whichever poem or message she desired to share, and gift that unique version to someone special in her

life. For Dickenson, there was a fine between her desire to share her work and her caution of who exactly

to share it with. 2 Kònyi Judit wrote Emily Dickinson and the Bypass of Publication, a 165 page analysis

regarding Dickenson. In it Judit asserts that “Dickinson’s poems are characterized by certain qualities

which make them withstand print publication, such as their dynamic, unfinished nature, the ambiguity and

multiplicity attached not only to the text including variant elements but also to the genre of the poems.

The same text may appear as an individual poem, as part of a collection or sequence, as a letter-poem, as

part of a prose letter embedded in it or attached to it or as an artifact: a manuscript copy of the poem

occasionally accompanied by a gift.” (Judit, 5) Judit further elaborates on the many different factors that

played into Dickenson’s refusal to publish, including her feelings towards the modern printing press. She

believed that general printing by the use of this new technology would prohibit greater interpretation of

her work by the reader. Dickenson felt that there was a great importance for her readers to not only

understand her work, but read it from the hand of her, the creator. She felt that her own penmanship

provided additional meaning to her writing, and that the reader would not have the full experience if not

1 Judit, Kónyi. Emily Dickinson and the Bypass of Publication. Piliscsaba , 2014.
2 Why Dickinson Did Not Publish. Author, Karen A. Dandurand. Publisher, University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, 1984. Length, 434 pages.

2
read from her own handwriting. The use of the printing press also eliminated any ability for Dickenson to

customize her work. She would work tirelessly to structure a specific piece in a very certain way, all of

which was dependent on who the poem was intended to be given to. “The appearance of the same text in

different contexts may change the poem to such an extent that it results in a text which may be considered

a variant, or in case of more than one differing contexts, as it often happens with a Dickinson poem, more

variants, due to the influence of the context on the poem.” (96) Alas, even with the research of historians

like Judit, there continues to be speculation amongst historians. Perhaps there is so much less to her

supposed desire to not publish; perhaps she had written solely for the sake of writing because she loved

the craft itself. Perhaps the burden of fame that was possible from writing was too much of a burden for

her, as if becoming famous for writing would take away the shine that made it so special. According to

Judit Dickenson possessed such a strong distaste for the modern printing presses that she could not bear to

utilize them. On the other side of the debate floor, Dandurand claims that Dickinson's wish to avoid fame

could potentially be misleading, due to the fact that Danduran’s novel, Why Dickenson did not Publish3 is

a secondary source. She was not alive while Dickinson wrote her poems and never spoke to her, therefore

we do not know whether or not Dickinson refused to publish due to her fear of fame; this is again, as

many details regarding Dickenson are, mere speculation. However, Dandurand’s point of view is valuable

as she brings new perspectives to the table. With her research rooted in the work and life of Dickenson,

Dandurand’s claim that Dickinson dodged publication to evidently avoid fame is a very likely reason for

Dickinson’s refusal to print. Although perhaps, what Dickenson truly feared was the inevitable

persecution that would come from her attempting to widely publish. Perhaps the fear of criticism kept her

in hiding, only sharing her work with a select few.

One of the greatest negatives of fame is that with it, comes a loss of privacy as well as a possible

avenue for criticism. I would argue that Dickenson’s attempt to stay anonymous was exactly for those

reasons stated previously, as well as the fact that she did not title any of her poems.

3 “The Publication Question.” Emily Dickinson Museum. Accessed June 4, 2022.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/the-poet-at-work/the-publication-question/.

3
 These two different manuscripts are the same poem by Dickinson titled, Title Divine -- is Mine, gifted to two

different people. None of her works are titleed so the assumed title is simply the first line of the poem. By the look of

her penmanship, the actual placement of some of her lines are moved.

In a compilation analysis of Dickenson’s work titled Title Divine -- is Mine4 two historians in

particular have very different opinions regarding the meaning behind Dickinson’s metaphors. “The title

being divine, it will be recognized only in heaven, when the lovers meet again.” (Stonum, 3) On that same

subject regarding marriage and death, Paula Bennett argues that “in the nineteenth century a woman’s

bridal was the mid-point between the two great, unalterable mysteries in her life: birth and death… as a

bride took a new name or ‘title,’ she was moreover both dead and reborn during the ceremony, dying to

her old life and baptized into her new one. As the midpoint in a woman’s life, the marriage ceremony was

also, equally important, her apex or ‘Acute Degree,’ the moment conferred upon her by God when she

experienced her greatest rapture or joy in living. And it was the moment in which she was translated from

one state of being into another, receiving not only a new name, but a new status, power, and identity.”

4 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. “Emily Dickinson's Letters,” October 1891.

4
(Bennett, 2) Perhaps these two historians (Stonum and Bennett) were actually analyzing different variants

of Dickinson’s poem. As mentioned earlier, Dickenson customized her work depending on who the

recipient of that particular poem would be. How amazing would it be if these two historians were reading

different variations of the same poem, and that is what influenced them to interpret it so differently?

Another hypothesis - Dickinson did not wish to publish her work because once printed, she could not

adjust or improve upon the work. As long as she was the only distributor, she wrote her living documents;

free to be adjusted or updated when and how she wanted without the burden of going through a publisher.

These points of view are not particularly valuable, especially considering how many other individuals

with far more historical research experience have analyzed the work of Emily Dickinson’s.

Had Dickinson written with the intention of avoiding fame, many people might wonder as to why

she became so famous anyways. Her father actually encouraged her to publish, but she never gave him an

answer as to why she didn’t want to.5 Ignoring her wishes to have her poems destroyed after her death,

Dickenson’s family published her work in 1890. In the 1891 October edition of The Atlantic, 6

Dickinson’s friend and editor of the first two collections of her poems reflected on her letters and recent

fame: “it is very doubtful if her poems would ever have been printed at all; and when published, they

were launched quietly and without any expectation of a wide audience; yet the outcome of it is that six

editions of the volume have been sold within six months, a suddenness of success almost without a

parallel in American literature.” (Higginson) A well known poet of the time, Wordsworth, went as far as

to publish criticisms of Dickinson and her work.7 He claimed that “Since Dickinson cannot truly replicate

insanity, she instead chooses to portray it as a physical sensation; imagine trying to convey the sense of a

terrible headache to one who has never had one, and then the logic behind Dickinson's choice of metaphor

becomes clearer.” (Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads) Perhaps it was critics like Wodsworth that made

5 Wordsworth, William (Schriftsteller), Raymond L. Brett, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Alun R. Jones. Lyrical
Ballads: The Text of the 1798 Ed. with the Additional 1800 Poems and the Prefaces. London: Methuen, 1976.

6 Judit, Kónyi. Emily Dickinson and the Bypass of Publication. Piliscsaba , 2014.
7 Bennett, Paula, Sharon Cameron, Wendy Martin, Gary Lee Stonum, Roseanne Hoefel, and Kim Hosman.
“ANALYSIS,” n.d.

5
Dickenson fear publishing. She gifted her poems to people she already knew well; friends and family. 8

Her worries regarding criticism could have also come due to the fact that she wrote very differently than

the poets who came before her - for example, her consistent theme of death and insanity. This particular

viewpoint is valuable because a lot of artists fear criticism for their craft. Art is subjective, so there are

always going to be people that do not like a particular piece.

Although Emily Dickinson clearly loved the craft of writing, she clearly never shared an

enthusiasm for publishing it to the general public. Her family, recognizing her genius, decided to publish

Dickensons work four years after their death, even though that was something she did not desire. Her

refusal to publish can be attributed to a combination of reasons, primarily being a desire to avoid fame,

and fear of criticism.

8 Why Dickinson Did Not Publish. Author, Karen A. Dandurand. Publisher, University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, 1984. Length, 434 pages.

6
 Bibliography

Bennett, Paula, Sharon Cameron, Wendy Martin, Gary Lee Stonum, Roseanne Hoefel, and Kim
Hosman. “ANALYSIS,” n.d.

Dickinson, Emily. Ms. Title Divine - Is Mine! Amherst College, n.d.

Dickinson, Emily. Ms. Title Divine - Is Mine! Harvard University, n.d.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. “Emily Dickinson's Letters,” October 1891.

Judit, Kónyi. Emily Dickinson and the Bypass of Publication. Piliscsaba , 2014.

“The Publication Question.” Emily Dickinson Museum. Accessed June 4, 2022.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/the-poet-at-work/the-publication-
question/.

Why Dickinson Did Not Publish. Author, Karen A. Dandurand. Publisher, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, 1984. Length, 434 pages.

Wordsworth, William (Schriftsteller), Raymond L. Brett, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Alun R.
Jones. Lyrical Ballads: The Text of the 1798 Ed. with the Additional 1800 Poems and the Prefaces.
London: Methuen, 1976.