{"id":881,"date":"2011-06-13T11:57:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T15:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=881"},"modified":"2011-06-13T15:50:34","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T19:50:34","slug":"emily-dickinsons-not-so-sacred-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2011\/06\/13\/emily-dickinsons-not-so-sacred-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Dickinson’s (not so) sacred book"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Bible is an antique Volume – \/ Written by faded Men \/ At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr 1577)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Was Emily Dickinson a religious person? She attended church services as a child, and the Dickinsons held daily religious observation in their home.\u00a0 But she rejected the religious revivalism that was so prominent a feature of her adolescence, and at some point ceased to attend church services altogether: “Some keep the Sabbath going to church \/ I keep it staying at home” (Fr 236).<\/p>\n

She did of course own a Bible\u2014her father gave her one in 1844, when she was 13, and it is in the Dickinson Collection at Houghton Library (EDR 8<\/a>).\u00a0 Her poetry and her letters abound with direct and indirect references from the Bible.\u00a0 She did not, however, consider her own Bible at all \u201csacred\u201d–she cut verses out of its pages, folded down corners, and used it to press flowers. Pictured below is a page from Psalms, with the vivid blue flower that was originally pressed there:<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dickinson\u2019s Bible is now available online<\/a>, part of a larger project to make the Dickinson Collection more easily available to those not physically here in Cambridge, as well as protecting this and other fragile volumes from the damaging effects of frequent consultation.\u00a0 New digitized volumes are added on an irregular basis\u2014keep an eye on this blog for information on new additions.\u00a0 Next to appear with be the Dickinson family\u2019s eight-volume set of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

For a complete list of the contents of the Dickinson family library, see the finding aid here<\/a>. For more information on the Dickinson collection at Houghton Library, visit our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Bible is an antique Volume – \/ Written by faded Men \/ At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -” (Fr 1577) Was Emily Dickinson a religious person? She attended church services as a child, and the Dickinsons held daily religious observation in their home.\u00a0 But she rejected the religious revivalism that was so prominent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-ed","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}