He advised the Amherst poet to study her craft further, but never offered to publish one of the poems she sent to him.
After her death in 1886 and with the dedicated sponsorship of her sister Lavinia, Dickinson's poems started to be published. Though the critics complained initially about Dickinson's brief, deceptively simple lyrics and their--at the time-- unorthodox use of language, the public made their voice known quite unanimously. The first printing of Dickinson's poems quickly sold-out and was just as quickly supplanted by further printings and further collections. The Dickinson literary mill has been working ever since, for over a hundred years, and Emily Dickinson is now considered one of the great American poets, read by adults and children alike, and translated into the major languages of the world. Critics, including Richard Sewall in his definitive two-volume biography, The Life of Emily Dickinson, now compares her to Walt Whitman for her contribution to American letters, and her poetry has been interpreted by various writers as representing everything from the first bugle call of Modernism to a deconstruction of America's Puritan past.
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