Emily Dickinson's Correspondences
Correspondence with Susan Dickinson

H B158

JL 908, JP 1599

FP 1641

OMC 243

about 1884

pencil, two two-leaf sheets

watermark/embossment: TALP, The American Linen Paper

20 x 12.5 cm.

folded in thirds


LL 82, four lines; FF 266, in part; similar message to a Mrs. Cooper is in Letters (ed. 1894), 392; (ed. 1931), 381; also LL 296. Both sheets have paste marks. Dickinson refers to George S. Merriam's biography, The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (New York, 1885, 2 vols.). Johnson notes that Merriam had asked Susan Dickinson for access to Bowles's letters to her. William S. Robinson ("Warrington") was the Boston correspondent for the Springfield Republican who died in 1876, several months before Bowles, and a collection of his writings, Pen-Portraits (Boston, 1877), had been issued by his wife. Johnson also identifies Dickinson's allusion to Robinson's "This life is so good, that it seems impossible for it to be wholly interrupted by death" (p. 162).

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Transcription and commentary copyright 1996 by Martha Nell Smith, all rights reserved
Last updated on May 2, 2001
Maintained by Tanya Clement <tclement@umd.edu>