October 29, 1999

Seeking Emily Dickinson, Poet, Gardener, Recluse, in the Privacy of Her Home

By DAVID L. WHEELER

Inside a glass case that reflects light from the library's chandeliers is a brownish-yellow newspaper clipping, an obituary from the Springfield Republican: "As she passed on in life, her sensitive nature shrank from much personal contact with the world, and more and more turned to her own large wealth of individual resources for companionship, sitting thenceforth, as someone said of her, 'in the light of her own fire.'"

The date on the obituary is May 18, 1886. I haven't seen anyone

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