How many poems did Emily Dickinson publish(write) during her life time?

Question

I think I saw some where that it was like 1775 poems that she wrote. I just want to make sure on how many she did write in her life time.

Answer 1

Although she wrote, at the last count, 1,789 poems, only a handful of them were published during her lifetime — all anonymously and some perhaps without her knowledge.

Answer 2

Since the Emily DIckinson Museum already has a compiled list of the poems published in her lifetime, I will share the link, which lists all eleven of them.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/publications_lifetime

In R.W. Franklin's definitive Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson there are indeed 1,789 poems. This superseded Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 Complete Poems of Emily DIckinson, which had held the 1775 poems known at that time.
I don't know where the misguided responder got the idea that her family got hold of her poems and destroyed most of them. It seems none of her family had any idea just how much poetry she'd written. Perhaps he's thinking of letters in the possession of family members and friends, many of whom did burn them at her request, after her death. If they contained more poems, we will never know.

There is a book by a man named WIlliam Shure that claims to have found about 500 more poems, but what he's done is pore over all of her known correspondence and picked out passages of prose he insists are poems she neglected to separate from the prose, and many are just very poetic one liners, which are lovely but I don't know that they would qualify as complete poems.

Answer 3

None.

Well, at least none were published in her lifetime. Her family took charge of her poems and destroyed many of them.

There is a belief that, had she not been so crippled by agoraphobia, Dickinson could have become a Romantic - goodness knows she had the skills - and sailed to England/Europe to join the second wave of Romantics represented by Keats and Shelley.

Wordsworth (as the sire[!]) of English Romanticism was the kind of prick who would have hated Emily per se. Goodness knows, he disliked K and S and would have found her poetry just as pantheistic.

Paul
p.s. Given the recent fascination with her work, it's nice that we have rediscovered the 'bobolink' - a garden bird which fascinated Dickinson and deserves to be celebrated...

Answer 4

Only seven of Dickinson's some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime, five of them in the Springfield Republican.

597 total (before and after death)

Answer 5

She wrote about 1789 poems that we know about. Very few were published during her lifetime, none with her name on them. Some of them may have even been published by others without her knowledge.

Answer 6

Emily Dickinson published 1776 poems , only seven of them released before she died.

Answer 7

She wrote around 1789, though only a few of them were published.