SOURCE: "Emily Dickinson's Prose," in Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Richard B. Sewell, Prentice Hall, 1963, pp. 162-77.

In the following essay, originally part of a 1961 doctoral dissertation, Higgins studies Dickinson's letters, observing that in both prose and poetry Dickinson reduced thoughts and ideas to their essences, Higgins discusses the method by which Dickinson composed her letters and her habit of combining poetry with her prose.

An earnest letter is or should be a life-warrant or death-warrant, for what is each instant but a gun, harmless because "unloaded," but that touched "goes off?"

—Emily Dickinson

"Last night the Warings had their novel wedding festival." T. W. Higginson wrote to his sister in 1876. "The Woolseys were bright as usual & wrote some funny things for different guests—one imaginary letter to me from my partially cracked poetess at Amherst, who writes to me & signs 'Your scholar'" (II...