Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay

Winter 2001

Introduction

This impressive online archive is maintained by the Dickinson Editing Collective, which consists of four general editors, a project manager, an advisory board, plus six staff members who handle technical issues.  The page is attractive and graphically interesting but is easy to navigate.  In addition to the four main areas of the site, the home page and the table of contents page both lead to a general search feature (an Excite search engine is used to search the site) and an “about the archives” essay, which is very well-written, informative introduction to the Dickinson materials.

The four major sections of the Dickinson Electronic Archives are: Writings by the Dickinson Family, Responses to Dickinson’s Writing, Teaching with the Archives, and Citation and Research Resources.

Writings by the Dickinson Family

Writings of three members of the Dickinson family are represented in the first section.  Access to Emily’s works is prohibited; users must contact the editors for the username and password.  Freely available are writings of Susan Dickinson, Emily’s sister-in-law, and Ned (Edward) Dickinson, Emily’s nephew.

The writings are represented by images of the actual archival materials with accompanying transcriptions.  Susan’s writings include poems, stories, correspondence, and reviews and essays.  Included in the latter category is her obituary for Emily, which was drafted on yellow lined paper.   Although the transcribed content of the obituary is quite touching, seeing the original manuscript adds to the overall experience. 

Ned’s section includes correspondence and also a notebook which contains his handwritten copies of poems, mostly by Emily, news clippings and other materials.

 Responses to Dickinson’s Writing

This area currently consists of three sections.  The first, called Titanic Operas, is particularly fascinating not only for those interested in Dickinson but also those interested in women writers generally.  Titanic Operas includes text, and in some cases, audio files, of poets and writers discussing Dickinson, her work, and her influence.  Among the many women included here are: Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov, Joyce Carol Oates, H.D., Adrienne Rich, and Katha Pollitt.

The second area is called Contemporary Youth’s Companion.  It is a section devoted to publishing poems and essays by writers who are 18 years old or younger. 

The third area, devoted to conference proceedings, will appeal to scholars.  Currently, users will find complete, full-text access to the papers which were delivered at 

“Unfastening the Fascicles,” an Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) Roundtable at the 1997 MLA Conference.   Papers from a roundtable on editing and archiving held at the 1999 EDIS Conference are forthcoming.

 Teaching with the Archives

Scholars and teachers will appreciate the contents of this section.  The heart of this section is a project entitled “The Classroom Electric: Whitman, Dickinson and American Culture.”  Partially funded by a US Department of Education FIPSE grant, The Classroom Electric provides online access to papers by scholars which have been arranged into three sections: papers dealing with “Song of Myself” and the correspondence of Emily and Susan, in which most of Emily’s work was first “published”; the poets and the Civil War (an event which had a huge impact on Whitman, and affected Dickinson to a much lesser degree); and a section of critical works about their most famous, most often taught poems, which is still being built.   The Classroom Electric is another wonderful example of what an online archive can deliver.

Additional materials are made available in a section called Archives in the Classroom.  This area provides links to projects done by students in graduate seminars taught by some of the archive’s general editors.  These mostly are projects which provide transcription and analysis of various archival documents.  The are also links to class plans which utilize archival documents; these could be quite useful for teachers at all levels.

Citation and Research Resources

In addition to the Archive’s guidelines for use, a number of informative links are provided in this section.  These include links to online citation guides, lists of articles related to Dickinson archives and Dickinson biography, and list of websites devoted to Dickinson.  A complete bibliography of all the materials included in the site is also provided.  Further, a section called “Detailed Description of the Archive” offers an interesting essay which touches on issues related to Dickinson and also addresses the importance of electronic texts and the archival materials and issues surrounding digital archives. 

Conclusion

The Dickinson Electronic Archives will obviously be a useful, enjoyable site for anyone interested in Emily Dickinson, but people generally interested in digital archives, women writers, teaching American literature, and using new technologies in teaching will also find this site well worth a visit.