Modern Books and Manuscripts

Signature from Emily Dickinson. Note and poems sent to Susan Dickinson, [early 1862] MS Am 1118.5 (B44). Gift, Gilbert H. Montague, 1950.

Houghton Library’s holdings of American poet Emily Dickinson include some 700 autograph poems, including 40 fascicles; some 300 letters; close to 600 books that might have been read by the poet; and furniture and objects, including the writing desk and chair from her bedroom at the Homestead—all material that descended by inheritance from Martha Dickinson Bianchi to Alfred Hampson, from whom it was purchased by Gilbert Montague, Harvard Class of 1901, in 1950, and given to Houghton Library.

The “Dickinson Collection”, however, is not monolithic; it consists of a number of smaller collections, some of which actually predate Montague’s gift to Harvard.  If one goes to OASIS (the Harvard finding aids database) and browses for collections listed under “Dickinson”, one finds 15 separate collections—and then one needs to add in the various Bianchi, Higginson, and other collections.

To facilitate navigation of these many collections, and to offer information on the their history, as well as access, permissions, and other resources, we’ve recently mounted a new “portal” to all things Dickinson at Houghton, available here:  http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/modern/dickinson.cfm

We hope the new site will make the Dickinson collections more easily navigable; we welcome any questions or comments by email, houghton_modern AT harvard DOT edu.