We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Emily Dickinson Archive, http://edickinson.org, an open-access site that brings together nearly all of Emily Dickinson’s extant poetry manuscripts. A collaborative effort across many institutions, the resource provides readers with images of manuscripts held in multiple libraries and archives, and also offers an array of transcriptions of Dickinson’s poems and digital tools intended to foster exploration and scholarship.
Users of the site can browse images of manuscripts by first line, date, or recipient, turn the pages of and zoom into the manuscripts, search the full text of six editions of Dickinson’s poems, browse Emily Dickinson’s Lexicon, a resource indexing Dickinson’s word choices along with their contemporary definitions from Dickinson’s dictionary, and create an account to make notes on images, save transcriptions of poems, and create new editions of her poetry.
Houghton Library holds over a thousand Dickinson autograph manuscript poems, and all are included in EDA. Other Dickinson material not yet included can be accessed through the Library’s guide to the Emily Dickinson Collection.
We hope the site will be useful to teachers, scholars, editors, and Dickinson enthusiasts. We welcome feedback and questions, which can be directed to EmilyDickinsonArchive AT harvard.edu.