Title: Epigraphs from Emily Dickinson's Poetry in 1894
Abstract: ‘THE END OF ANIMOSITY’ (1894), a short story by the once popular American writer Louise Clarkson (Whitelock) (1865–1927), offers the earliest known example of an epigraphic use of lines from Emily Dickinson’s poetry.1 In that story Clarkson quotes two Dickinson poems in their entirety and one stanza from a third to serve as epigraphs to the story’s three chapters. Since these poems did not achieve print until 1890, less than four years before the publication of ‘The End of Animosity’, it is telling that Clarkson thought highly enough of Dickinson’s poetry to implant her lines as part of the overall structure of her story. The three poems chosen by Clarkson are taken from Poems, published four years after Dickinson’s death, the first of three volumes of her poetry to appear in the 1890s.2 It is of passing interest that while Dickinson’s first reviewers paid some attention to ‘Presentiment’, they paid almost no attention to the other two poems.3
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-11-07
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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