The gardens of Emily Dickinson

“The Gardens of Emily Dickinson” is the first substantial study devoted to Emily Dickinson’s lifelong engagement with flowers and gardening and the ways this passion permeated her art.

Drawing on Dickinson’s poems, letters, herbarium, and the historical record of the gardens she tended at the Homestead in Amherst, Judith Farr reconstructs the poet’s indoor and outdoor gardens and shows how particular plants, colors, and seasons informed her metaphors and symbols.

Beautifully produced, with color plates and halftone illustrations of flowers, garden plans, and pages from Dickinson’s herbarium, the book reveals the poet as both gardener and visionary, joining visual and botanical culture to literary analysis to illuminate an essential dimension of Dickinson’s creative world.