Publisher's Note

Introduction

PART I: 1842-1846
"...the Hens lay finely..."

PART II: 1847-1848
"I am really at Mt Holyoke..."

PART III: 1849-1850
"Amherst is alive with fun this winter..."

PART IV: 1851-1854
"...we do not have much poetry, father having made up his mind
that its pretty much all real life."

PART V: 1855-1857
"To live, and die, and mount again in triumphant body...
is no schoolboy's theme!"

PART VI: 1858-1861
"Much has occurred...so much that I stagger as I write,
in its sharp remembrance."

PART VII: 1862-1865
"Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that-
My Business is Circumference."

PART VIII: 1866-1869
"A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is
the mind alone without corporeal friend."

PART IX: 1870-1874
"I find ecstasy in living the mere sense of living is joy enough."

PART X: 1875-1879
"Nature is a Haunted House but Art -
a House that tries to be haunted."

PART XI: 1880-1883
"I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few and
each must be the chiefest..."

PART XII: 1884-1886
"...a Letter is a joy of Earth it is denied the Gods."

Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Recipients of Letters and
of Persons Mentioned in Them

Index