Emily Dickinson, Dickinson and “Master”, Poets and Poetry at Aspirennies.com

In the 1850s Emily Dickinson began two of her significant correspondences—with Dr. and Mrs. Josiah G. Holland and with Samuel Bowles. The two men were editors of the Springfield Republican, a Massachusetts paper that took an interest in literary matters and even published verse. The correspondence continued over the years, although in the case of the Hollands most of the letters after the 1850s went to Mrs. Holland, an intelligent woman who comprehended Dickinson's subtleties and witticisms. Dickinson tried to interest Bowles in her poetry, and it was a crushing blow to her that he, a man of quick mind but conventional literary tastes, failed to appreciate it.

By the late 1850s, when she was writing poems at a steadily increasing pace, Dickinson loved a man whom she called “Master” in three drafts of letters. “Master” does not exactly resemble any of her known friends but may have been Bowles or Wadsworth. This love shines forth in several lines from her poems: “I'm ceded—I've stopped being Theirs,” “'Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy,” and “Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?” to name only a few. Other poems reveal the frustration of this love and its gradual sublimation into a love for Christ and a celestial marriage to him. --David J.M. Higgins

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Dickinson and “Master”