Emily Dickinson's handwritten manuscripts

May 15, 2014 3:50 PM

The Emily Dickinson Archive is a collection of high resolution digital images of Emily Dickinson's handwritten manuscripts. Here are, for instance, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Tell the Truth but Tell It Slant, I Dwell in Possibility, They Shut Me Up in Prose and I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died. The whole collection is fully searchable and the images include the text of the poems as they were written down by Dickinson. The archive is a project of Harvard's Houghton Library but many other institutions provided manuscripts. Perhaps the best place to start is to simply browse the poems by title.
posted by Kattullus (10 comments total)

The whole site is awesome, but my favorite part is the copyright page:

Images of manuscripts, attribution information, and transcriptions displayed within this site (the “ED Material”) are governed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) (available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode).

You do not need permission to use ED Material for personal research, in-class teaching purposes, school projects and assignments, blog posts, or other non-commercial uses. ED Material incorporated in EDA must be used with accompanying credit line to the owning institution, and may not be copied or provided to others without this information. For images of manuscripts, this information is located in the credit line accompanying the image. You do not need permission to link to EDA or to individual items within EDA. We prefer that you link to the home page at http://edickinson.org, and that links to individual items within the EDA be accompanied by a link to the homepage.

Props to my colleague Leslie Morris, who did an outstanding job of spearheading this project.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:33 PM on May 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

Seems great, but can't really tell on my phone. Maybe a mobile site should be next on the to-do list?
posted by AwkwardPause at 4:48 PM on May 15, 2014

My eyes filled with tears to see "...This is the Hour of Lead -- Remembered, if outlived..." in Dickinson's hand. Thank you for bringing me this good thing, Kattullus.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:26 PM on May 15, 2014

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
posted by shakespeherian at 7:15 PM on May 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

In Tell the Truth, what is her alternative word for "bright"? Is it "gold"?

This is great; thank you, Kattullus.
posted by torticat at 8:08 PM on May 15, 2014

According to the transcription it's "bold."
posted by Kattullus at 11:19 PM on May 15, 2014

Wow. Thank you for this!

On touring Ms. Dickinson's home in Amherst I was struck by the worshipful tone of the docents, and by their memorization of her poetry. Although the home was largely empty, her presence was tangible. I've toured many historic homes, and hers really stands out in my mind. Her language really does transcend time in ways her contemporaries' could not. Even her penmanship feels oddly timeless.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:32 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is why the internet is there.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:40 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Beautiful! Thanks Katullus.
posted by honey-barbara at 6:00 AM on May 16, 2014

The "Yellow Rose of Texas" thing permanently destroyed my ability to read Dickinson's poetry.
posted by Shepherd at 6:40 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]