Many who know of Emily Dickinson's (1830–86) project of self-publication in her “Fascicles,” the term given by an early editor for the forty extant holographic collections of poems in groups ranging from eleven to twenty-nine poems, have been awaiting a study edition of the fascicles and other manuscripts. Especially since 1981, when Ralph Franklin published his two-volume edition of the reproductions of the poems that Dickinson left on folded sheets sewn into chapbook-sized booklets between 1858 and 1864 (The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson), scholars have relished the possibilities inherent in seeing Dickinson face to face through these booklets. Cristanne Miller has met this need—with, perhaps, some qualifications.
Miller's hefty and most welcome edition presents “easily legible access to the full complexity of Dickinson's work and her working process” (vii) through the printed versions of “Dickinson's retained poems” (viii). Miller describes, in her preface and introduction, her own...
