Although there is little direct criticism of "Much Madness Is Divinest Sense," the range of comments over the years signifies how Dickinson's reputation as a poet has grown. The Recognition of Emily Dickinson, edited by Caesar R. Blake and Carlton F. Wells, contains many critical essays on the writing of Dickinson in general, which collectively demonstrate the increased appreciation of her writing over time. It begins with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who writes, in the preface to Dickinson's first published collection in 1890:

the verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically
to what Emerson has long since called 'the Poetry of
the Portfolio,'—something produced absolutely
without the thought of publication, and solely by way
of the expression of the writer's own mind.

Higginson believed that it was because of this attitude that Dickinson had the freedom of "daring thoughts." Three years after the publication of this collection...