Dickinson Criticism 1920-1929

Martha Dickinson Bianchi's 1924 Life and Letters, and Bianchi's continual publication of new Dickinson poems, ignited critical discussion of the poet in the 1920s. Major critics and commentators weighed in with opinions on her work. Towards the end of the decade, new professionalization of the discipline of American literature led to academic publication on Dickinson. The first volume of American Literature, for instance, includes a survey of the poet's reception by Anna Mary Wells.

Aiken, Conrad. "Emily Dickinson." Dial 76 (1924): 301-308. Repr. Blake & Wells, Sewall. Sees ED as "among the finest poets in the language," marvelous because she comes out of what Aiken regards as the cultural wasteland of small-town New England, linked only by T.W. Higginson to the wider world.

Armstrong, Martin. "The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." Spectator 130 (6 January 1923): 22-23. Repr. Blake & Wells. Praise for ED's concentration of meaning and her startling vocabulary.

Foerster, Norman. "Emily Dickinson," in the Cambridge History of American Literature (1921). Repr. Blake & Wells. Concludes that ED is a minor poet, but the best of the late-19th-century Eastern US writers, her place "inconspicuous but secure."

Hillyer, Robert. "Emily Dickinson." Freeman 6 (18 October 1922). Repr. Blake & Wells. Considers ED an incomparable poet, original, bold, and idiosyncractic, who broke through Victorian staidness and Puritan fear.

Lubbock, Percy. "Determined Little Anchoress." Nation and Atheneum (18 October 1924). Repr. Blake & Wells. ED as an eccentric genius whose technical faults arose from having too few critical readers around her.

Miles, Susan. "The Irregularities of Emily Dickinson." London Mercury (13 December 1925): 145-158. Dickinson used inexact rhyme to achieve "an aesthetic impression of a cleft and unmatching world."

Monro, Harold. "Emily Dickinson--Overrated." Criterion 3 (1925): 322-324. Repr. Blake & Wells. ED was timid, uncandid, and awkward in her technique as a result.

Sapir, Edward. "Emily Dickinson, a Primitive." Poetry 26 (1925): 97-105. Places ED in contrast to Walt Whitman. Sees her as correcting Whitman's tendency to fixate on material things and to idealize democracy in a maudlin way.

Spencer, Theodore. "Concentration and Intensity." New England Quarterly 2 (1929): 498-501. Repr. Blake & Wells. Compares ED to the Metaphysicals in her technique of yoking homely words with dignified words.

Wells, Anna Mary. "Early Criticism of Emily Dickinson." American Literature 1 (1929): 243-259. Repr. Cady & Budd. Biography, followed by brief summaries of critical response to ED in the 1890s.

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