SOURCE: "Poetry Readers and Reading in the 1890's: Emily Dickinson's First Reception," in Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, edited by James L. Machor, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 164-79.

In the following essay, Buckingham reviews the reception of Dickinson's poetry by readers in the 1890s, stating that they praised her inspirational thoughts and feelings more than they respected her poetic technique.

When Emily Dickinson's Poems first appeared in 1890, her reluctant Boston publisher, Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers, wondered whether his firm could afford to underwrite even a small edition of 500 copies.¹ Within three months the book had elicited well over 100 reviews, and Roberts Brothers was shipping its sixth printing. By decade's end, sales of that first volume alone had reached 10,000; two additional collections of poems and one of letters accounted for another 10,000 books sold. The 600 notices her books received are recently collected...