

Franklin and the Press published a new three-volume edition containing 1,789 of Dickinson’s poems, the largest number ever assembled. In 1958, the Press followed up with a three-volume edition of Dickinson’s letters, edited by Johnson and Theodora Ward. This landmark edition presented, for the first time, transcriptions of all of Dickinson’s known poems, noting variant words and including multiple versions of poems.


Johnson was chosen as editor, and the three-volume Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by Harvard University Press in 1955. Soon thereafter, the well-known literary historian Thomas H. In 1950, Harvard’s Houghton Library received its world-renowned Dickinson Collection as a gift from the poet’s heirs, together with publication rights. Emily Dickinson’s writing table and chair, on display in the Houghton Library’s Dickinson Room.
