H B59

JL 320

mid-1860s

pencil, two two-leaf sheets, very worn

gilt-edged

watermark/embossment: A, Paris, embossed

16 x 10 cm.

multiple folds

AM CXV (1915) 40, in part; FF 256, in part. "-1-" on verso on second sheet. Paste marks. Johnson notes that this may well have been written while "Susan and Austin were vacationing at the seashore, perhaps in Swampscott." And he identifies other allusions: Uncle William, father Edward Dickinson's brother, resided in Worcester; John and Eliza Dudley were supposed to visit; Clara Newman, Edward's orphaned niece, was around twenty and, with her sister Anna (two years younger), lived with Austin and Susan from October 1858 to Clara's marriage in 1869 (from the time they were 14 and 12 respectively to the ages of 25 and 23) and may have been selling tobacco she had raised; Thoreau's Cape Cod was published in 1865; Ticknor and Fields was a well known Boston publishing firm.

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Transcription and commentary copyright 1996 by Martha Nell Smith, all rights reserved
Last updated on April 18, 2001
Maintained by Tanya Clement <tclement@umd.edu>