Alterations in Emily Dickinson's Poems, First Series

I have been engaged in a research into Emily Dickinson's creative activity by examining the suggested changes written into her manuscripts. My research has indicated that one of the possible intentions Dickinson might have had in giving the suggested changes was to try, whether consciously or unconsciously, to conform to standards of current literary taste. Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890) edited by Mabel L. Todd and Thomas W. Higginson is well known to have quite a few alterations made by the editors, and it seems very possible that those alterations show the literary taste and sensibilities of the poet's contemporaries represented by the editors. The purpose of this paper, then, is to examine the alterations in Poems, First Series, guess the principles and literary taste that guided the editors in their editorial process, and compare them with Dickinson's intentions of her suggested changes. 1. After the alterations on capital letters, dashes, punctuation marks and stanza division in the 115 poems in Poems, First Series were excluded from alterations, the number of those poems which did not have any alterations was 40 (about 35%). 2. Then, after such alterations as those on wrong spellings, grammatical errors and so on were excluded from the rest 75 poems as minor and reasonable alterations, the number of those alterations which seemed to deserve close examination was 105 in 54 poems. 3. The editors made alteration by changing single words, plural words, adding words, changing word order and lines, omitting stanzas, and substituting whole lines. 4. In getting words or phrases for alteration, the editors made use of the suggested changes Dickinson had written into her manuscripts. About 39% of the alterations were made by taking the suggested changes into consideration. 5. The standards of judgment of the editors are the same both in the alterations made by using the poet's suggested changes and in those made by the editors' own words. The editors' efforts of alteration seem to have been directed toward giving right rhythm and rhyme, making the meaning of words or lines easier to understand, altering unnatural or awkward expressions to more sensible ones, changing too strong or shocking expressions into milder ones, and adding religious, emotional or sentimental quality. 6. Though not all the alterations offered by the editors seem to have been against Dickinson's intention, there were cases where alterations caused distortion of meaning and Dickinsonian characteristics