Dickinson Criticism 1930-1934

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Dickinson Criticism 1930-1934

Blunden, Edmund. "An Unguessed Poetry." Nation and Atheneum 46 (22 March 1930): 134-137. Repr. Blake & Wells. Stresses ED's kinship with Emerson; speaks of a nameless unguessed something behind her work.

Hicks, Granville. "Emily Dickinson and the Gilded Age." In The Great Tradition (NY: The Dial Press, 1933). Repr. Blake & Wells. Argues that ED could never have assumed the "genteel" role demanded of public poets 1850-1880; her private career fitted her independent qualities well. Excellent essay on literary conventionality.

Lowell, Amy. "Emily Dickinson." In Poetry and Poets: Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930: 88-108. Lowell sees ED as a startled, terrified non-conformist who "reveled in her own imagination." Treats ED as a proto-Imagist.

Moore, Marianne. "Emily Dickinson." Poetry 41 (1933): 219-226. Repr. The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (NY: Viking, 1986). "One resents the cavil that makes idiosyncrasy out of individuality," says Moore in this deeply individual reading of the 1931 edition of Dickinson's letters.

Read, Herbert. "The Range of Emily Dickinson." Spectator 151 (29 December 1933): 971. Repr. Blake & Wells. Finds ED monotonous, complaining of her "incapacity, insensitiveness, incredible naïvety"; but has praise for a "cryptic economy" in her work that recalls Emily Brontë.

Tate, Allen. "Emily Dickinson." In Collected Essays, 1932. Repr. Blake & Wells; Sewall. Argues for a unified, visual sensibility in ED's work. Traces her poetic inspiration to a decision to master the world by rejecting it. An essay very much in the critical tradition of T.S. Eliot.

Ward. A.C. "A Major American Poet." In American Literature 1880-1930. London: Methuen, 1932. 43-52. Repr. Blake & Wells. Sees ED as a polar opposite to Walt Whitman; sees her as a cross between Emily Brontë and Jane Austen.

Whicher, George F. "A Centennial Appraisal." In Emily Dickinson: A Bibliography. Amherst: The Jones Library, 1930. 9-15. Repr. Blake & Wells. A brief history of commentary on ED, with some standard critical remarks.