Birds are everywhere in nineteenth-century American literature, including the work of Emily Dickinson. Women poets often referred to their poems in terms of making songs. This essay rethinks the birds in Dickinson’s letters and poems. It suggests that Dickinson’s birds, and their songs, show her awareness of business. They exist within com…[Read more]

Although Emily Dickinson’s papers were preserved because of her place in literary history, not her musical knowledge, her engagement with music provides an opportunity to consider pre-twentieth-century fandom. New technologies and established social networks enabled fandom for a young rural woman. For this population more than male and urban a…[Read more]

Carlton Lowenberg’s Musicians Wrestle Everywhere lists “Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart?” (1896) as the earliest musical adaptation of Dickinson’s poetry. Yet the song’s composer, Etta Parker, was performing it two years earlier. Also in 1894, a well-known German-British composer, Jacques Blumenthal, issued two Dickinson settings…[Read more]