Between the years of 1858 and 1864, Emily Dickinson was hard at work organizing her poems into forty separate fascicles. What is a fascicle? A fascicle is a bundle, and in this case, a bundle of poem manuscripts that were bound to essentially form a little book. Dickinson's fascicles were not discovered until after her death. It's evedent that Dickinson bundled her poems into these fascicles based more on themes than on chronology. Therefore, the fascicles need not necessarily be read in order. Our site looks at fascicles 6 and 16, to analyze the changes publishers made mainly in punctuation. It is not our intention to make any connections between themes or chronological events.
This page contains information from Emily Dickinson: A Literary Life By L. Wagner-Martin. For additional information, please visit our Bibliography page.