Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of Emily Dickinson's chief influences. The collection Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, published in 1900 in six volumes and edited by Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke, serves as a good introduction to Browning.

An extensive anthology of women writers in English, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English, edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, includes fiction, poetry and prose by more than 140 female authors, including a biographical essay about Dickinson. Published in 1985.

A contemporary of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman is perhaps best known for his collection of poems entitled Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855.

A popular novelist who made her living by writing, Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton) was also a contemporary of Emily Dickinson. Her novel Ruth Hall, published in 1855, is about a woman succeeding in the male-dominated...