Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Life The Dickinson family A portrait of the poet as a young girl Early ambitions, difficult changes Preceptors "Sister Sue" A "Woman - white - to be" Chapter 2 Context Religious culture: Puritanism, the Great Awakenings, and revivals Industrialization and the individual Political culture: expansion and the antebellum period Social movements: Abolition and women's rights Philosophical reactions: Transcendentalism The Civil War Chapter 3 Works Sweeping with many-colored brooms: the influence of the domestic Blasphemous devotion: biblical allusion in the poems and letters "Easy, quite, to love": friendship and love in Dickinson's life and works "The Heaven - below": nature poems "A Riddle, at the last": death and immortality Chapter 4 Reception "The Auction Of the Mind": publication history Editing the poems and letters Early reception New Criticism Dickinson's legacy today Notes Guide to further reading Index
