How Anthologists Made Dickinson a Tolerable American Woman Writer

This essay examines how anthologies published before 1955 distorted Dickinson's biography to help shape an ideologically acceptable picture of feminine creativity. This version of the woman poet involved several features: childlikeness, domesticity, intense imagination, and an otherworldliness kept safe within her own head or the walls of her home. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, anthologies of different critical leanings and audiences continually rearticulated such a picture of Dickinson, which likely helped secure her place in the canon.