Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830– May 15, 1886) was an American poet.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst.
Some argue that Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence.[3]
While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.[4] The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Her poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[5] Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A 1998 New York Times article revealed that of the many edits made to Dickinson's work, the name "Susan" was often deliberately removed. At least 11 of Dickinson's poems were dedicated to sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, though all the dedications were obliterated, presumably by Todd.[6] A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955.
Life
Family and early childhood

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the family's homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family.[7] Her father, Edward Dickinson was a lawyer in Amherst and a trustee of Amherst College.[8] Two hundred years earlier, her patrilineal ancestors had arrived in the New World—in the Puritan Great Migration—where they prospered.[9] Emily Dickinson's paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College.[10] In 1813, he built the Homestead, a large mansion on the town's Main Street, that became the focus of Dickinson family life for the better part of a century.[11] Samuel Dickinson's eldest son, Edward, was treasurer of Amherst College for nearly forty years, served numerous terms as a State Legislator, and represented the Hampshire district in the United States Congress. On May 6, 1828, he married Emily Norcross from Monson. They had three children:
William Austin (1829–1895), known as Austin, Aust or Awe
Emily Elizabeth
Lavinia Norcross (1833–1899), known as Lavinia or Vinnie[12]
By all accounts, young Emily was a well-behaved girl. On an extended visit to Monson when she was two, Emily's Aunt Lavinia described Emily as "perfectly well & contented—She is a very good child & but little trouble."[13] Emily's aunt also noted the girl's affinity for music and her particular talent for the piano, which she called "the moosic".[14]
Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story building on Pleasant Street.[15] Her education was "ambitiously classical for a Victorian girl".[16] Her father wanted his children well-educated and he followed their progress even while away on business. When Emily was seven, he wrote home, reminding his children to "keep school, and learn, so as to tell me, when I come home, how many new things you have learned".[17] While Emily consistently described her father in a warm manner, her correspondence suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof. In a letter to a confidante, Emily wrote she "always ran Home to Awe [Austin] when a child, if anything befell me. He was an awful Mother, but I liked him better than none."[18]
On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys' school that had opened to female students just two years earlier.[15] At about the same time, her father purchased a house on North Pleasant Street.[19] Emily's brother Austin later described this large new home as the "mansion" over which he and Emily presided as "lord and lady" while their parents were absent.[20] The house overlooked Amherst's burial ground, described by one local minister as treeless and "forbidding".[19]
Teenage years

They shut me up in Prose–

As when a little Girl

They put me in the Closet–

Because they liked me "still"–

Still! Could themself have peeped–

And seen my Brain– go round–

They might as wise have lodged a Bird

For Treason– in the Pound–
Emily Dickinson, c. 1862[21]

Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy, taking classes in English and classical literature, Latin, botany, geology, history, "mental philosophy," and arithmetic.[22] Daniel Taggart Fiske, the school's principal at the time, would later recall that Dickinson was "very bright" and "an excellent scholar, of exemplary deportment, faithful in all school duties".[23] Although she had a few terms off due to illness—the longest of which was in 1845–1846, when she was enrolled for only eleven weeks[24]—she enjoyed her strenuous studies, writing to a friend that the Academy was "a very fine school".[25]
Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the "deepening menace" of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April 1844, Emily was traumatized.[26] Recalling the incident two years later, Emily wrote that "it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face."[27] She became so melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover.[25] With her health and spirits restored, she soon returned to Amherst Academy to continue her studies.[28] During this period, she first met people who were to become lifelong friends and correspondents, such as Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Jane Humphrey, and Susan Huntington Gilbert (who later married Emily's brother Austin).
In 1845, a religious revival took place in Amherst, resulting in 46 confessions of faith among Dickinson's peers.[29] Dickinson wrote to a friend the following year: "I never enjoyed such perfect peace and happiness as the short time in which I felt I had found my savior."[30] She went on to say that it was her "greatest pleasure to commune alone with the great God & to feel that he would listen to my prayers."[30] The experience did not last: Dickinson never made a formal declaration of faith and attended services regularly for only a few years.[31] After her church-going ended, about 1852, she wrote a poem opening: "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church– / I keep it, staying at Home".[32]
During the last year of her stay at the Academy, Emily became friendly with Leonard Humphrey, its popular new young principal. After finishing her final term at the Academy on August 10, 1847, Dickinson began attending Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (which later became Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley, about ten miles (16km) from Amherst.[33] She was at the seminary for only ten months. Although she liked the girls at Holyoke, Dickinson made no lasting friendships there.[34] The explanations for her brief stay at Holyoke differ considerably: either she was in poor health, her father wanted to have her at home, she rebelled against the evangelical fervor present at the school, she disliked the discipline-minded teachers, or she was simply homesick.[35] Whatever the specific reason for leaving Holyoke, her brother Austin appeared on March 25, 1848, to "bring [her] home at all events".[36] Back in Amherst, Dickinson occupied her time with household activities.[37] She took up baking for the family and enjoyed attending local events and activities in the budding college town.[38]
Early influences and writing
When she was eighteen, Dickinson's family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin Newton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Newton's death, he had been "with my Father two years, before going to Worcester– in pursuing his studies, and was much in our family."[39] Although their relationship was probably not romantic, Newton was a formative influence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson referred to, variously, as her tutor, preceptor or master.[40]
Newton likely introduced her to the writings of William Wordsworth, and his gift to her of Ralph Waldo Emerson's first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. She wrote later that he, "whose name my Father's Law Student taught me, has touched the secret Spring".[41] Newton held her in high regard, believing in and recognizing her as a poet. When he was dying of tuberculosis, he wrote to her, saying that he would like to live until she achieved the greatness he foresaw.[41] Biographers believe that Dickinson's statement of 1862—"When a little Girl, I had a friend, who taught me Immortality– but venturing too near, himself– he never returned"—refers to Newton.[42]
Dickinson was familiar not only with the Bible but also with contemporary popular literature.[43] She was probably influenced by Lydia Maria Child's Letters from New York, another gift from Newton[26] (after reading it, she gushed "This then is a book! And there are more of them!"[26]). Her brother smuggled a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Kavanagh into the house for her (because her father might disapprove)[44] and a friend lent her Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in late 1849.[45] Jane Eyre's influence cannot be measured, but when Dickinson acquired her first and only dog, a Newfoundland, she named him "Carlo" after the character St. John Rivers' dog.[45] William Shakespeare was also a potent influence in her life. Referring to his plays, she wrote to one friend, "Why clasp any hand but this?" and to another, "Why is any other book needed?"[46]
Adulthood and seclusion
In early 1850, Dickinson wrote that "Amherst is alive with fun this winter ... Oh, a very great town this is!"[37] Her high spirits soon turned to melancholy after another death. The Amherst Academy principal, Leonard Humphrey, died suddenly of "brain congestion" at age 25.[47] Two years after his death, she revealed to her friend Abiah Root the extent of her depression:some of my friends are gone, and some of my friends are sleeping– sleeping the churchyard sleep– the hour of evening is sad– it was once my study hour– my master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey.[48]

During the 1850s, Emily's strongest and most affectionate relationship was with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. Emily eventually sent her over three hundred letters, more than to any other correspondent, over the course of their relationship. Susan was supportive of the poet, playing the role of "most beloved friend, influence, muse, and adviser" whose editorial suggestions Dickinson sometimes followed.[49] In an 1882 letter to Susan, Emily said, "With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living."
The importance of Emily's relationship with Susan has widely been overlooked due to a point of view first promoted by Mabel Loomis Todd, Austin Dickinson's longtime mistress, who diminished Susan's role in Emily's life due to her own poor relationship with her lover's wife.[50] However, the notion of a "cruel" Susan—as promoted by her romantic rival—has been questioned, most especially by Susan and Austin's surviving children, with whom Emily was close.[51] Many scholars interpret the relationship between Emily and Susan as a romantic one. In The Emily Dickinson Journal Lena Koski wrote, "Dickinson's letters to Gilbert express strong homoerotic feelings."[52] She quotes from many of their letters, including one from 1852 in which Emily proclaims, "Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday, and be my own again, and kiss me... I hope for you so much, and feel so eager for you, feel that I cannot wait, feel that now I must have you—that the expectation once more to see your face again, makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart beats so fast... my darling, so near I seem to you, that I disdain this pen, and wait for a warmer language." The relationship between Emily and Susan is portrayed in the film Wild Nights with Emily.
Sue married Austin in 1856 after a four-year courtship, though their marriage was not a happy one. Edward Dickinson built a house for Austin and Sue naming it the Evergreens, a stand of which was located on the west side of the Homestead.[53]
Until 1855, Dickinson had not strayed far from Amherst. That spring, accompanied by her mother and sister, she took one of her longest and farthest trips away from home.[54] First, they spent three weeks in Washington, where her father was representing Massachusetts in Congress. Then they went to Philadelphia for two weeks to visit family. In Philadelphia, she met Charles Wadsworth, a famous minister of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, with whom she forged a strong friendship which lasted until his death in 1882.[55] Despite seeing him only twice after 1855 (he moved to San Francisco in 1862), she variously referred to him as "my Philadelphia", "my Clergyman", "my dearest earthly friend" and "my Shepherd from 'Little Girl'hood".[56]

From the mid-1850s, Emily's mother became effectively bedridden with various chronic illnesses until her death in 1882.[58] Writing to a friend in summer 1858, Emily said that she would visit if she could leave "home, or mother. I do not go out at all, lest father will come and miss me, or miss some little act, which I might forget, should I run away– Mother is much as usual. I Know not what to hope of her".[59] As her mother continued to decline, Dickinson's domestic responsibilities weighed more heavily upon her and she confined herself within the Homestead. Forty years later, Lavinia stated that because their mother was chronically ill, one of the daughters had to remain always with her.[59] Emily took this role as her own, and "finding the life with her books and nature so congenial, continued to live it".[59]
Withdrawing more and more from the outside world, Emily began in the summer of 1858 what would be her lasting legacy. Reviewing poems she had written previously, she began making clean copies of her work, assembling carefully pieced-together manuscript books.[60] The forty fascicles she created from 1858 through 1865 eventually held nearly eight hundred poems.[60] No one was aware of the existence of these books until after her death.
In the late 1850s, the Dickinsons befriended Samuel Bowles, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican, and his wife, Mary.[61] They visited the Dickinsons regularly for years to come. During this time Emily sent him over three dozen letters and nearly fifty poems.[62] Their friendship brought out some of her most intense writing and Bowles published a few of her poems in his journal.[63] It was from 1858 to 1861 that Dickinson is believed to have written a trio of letters that have been called "The Master Letters". These three letters, drafted to an unknown man simply referred to as "Master", continue to be the subject of speculation and contention amongst scholars.[64]
The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life,[65] proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period.[66] Modern scholars and researchers are divided as to the cause for Dickinson's withdrawal and extreme seclusion. While she was diagnosed as having "nervous prostration" by a physician during her lifetime,[67] some today believe she may have suffered from illnesses as various as agoraphobia[68] and epilepsy.[69]
Is "my Verse ... alive?"
In April 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic, radical abolitionist, and ex-minister, wrote a lead piece for The Atlantic Monthly titled, "Letter to a Young Contributor". Higginson's essay, in which he urged aspiring writers to "charge your style with life", contained practical advice for those wishing to break into print.[70] Dickinson's decision to contact Higginson suggests that by 1862 she was contemplating publication and that it may have become increasingly difficult to write poetry without an audience.[71] Seeking literary guidance that no one close to her could provide, Dickinson sent him a letter which read in full:[72]

Mr Higginson,
Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?
 The Mind is so near itself– it cannot see, distinctly– and I have none to ask–
 Should you think it breathed– and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude–
 If I make the mistake– that you dared to tell me– would give me sincerer honor– toward you–
 I enclose my name– asking you, if you please– Sir– to tell me what is true?
 That you will not betray me– it is needless to ask– since Honor is it's [sic] own pawn–

This highly nuanced and largely theatrical letter was unsigned, but she had included her name on a card and enclosed it in an envelope, along with four of her poems.[73] He praised her work but suggested that she delay publishing until she had written longer, being unaware that she had already appeared in print. She assured him that publishing was as foreign to her "as Firmament to Fin", but also proposed that "If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her".[74] Dickinson delighted in dramatic self-characterization and mystery in her letters to Higginson.[75] She said of herself, "I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."[76] She stressed her solitary nature, stating that her only real companions were the hills, the sundown, and her dog, Carlo. She also mentioned that whereas her mother did not "care for Thought", her father bought her books, but begged her "not to read them– because he fears they joggle the Mind".[77]
Dickinson valued his advice, going from calling him "Mr. Higginson" to "Dear friend" as well as signing her letters, "Your Gnome" and "Your Scholar".[78] His interest in her work certainly provided great moral support; many years later, Dickinson told Higginson that he had saved her life in 1862.[79] They corresponded until her death, but her difficulty in expressing her literary needs and a reluctance to enter into a cooperative exchange left Higginson nonplussed; he did not press her to publish in subsequent correspondence.[80] Dickinson's own ambivalence on the matter militated against the likelihood of publication.[81] Literary critic Edmund Wilson, in his review of Civil War literature, surmised that "with encouragement, she would certainly have published".[82]
The woman in white
In direct opposition to the immense productivity that she displayed in the early 1860s, Dickinson wrote fewer poems in 1866.[83] Beset with personal loss as well as loss of domestic help, Dickinson may have been too overcome to keep up her previous level of writing.[84] Carlo died during this time after providing sixteen years of companionship; Dickinson never owned another dog. Although the household servant of nine years, Margaret O Brien, had married and left the Homestead that same year, it was not until 1869 that her family brought in a permanent household servant, Margaret Maher, to replace the old one.[85] Emily once again was responsible for chores, including the baking, at which she excelled.

A solemn thing– it was– I said–

A Woman– White– to be–

And wear– if God should count me fit–

Her blameless mystery–
Emily Dickinson, c. 1861[86]

Around this time, Dickinson's behavior began to change. She did not leave the Homestead unless it was absolutely necessary and as early as 1867, she began to talk to visitors from the other side of a door rather than speaking to them face to face.[87] She acquired local notoriety; she was rarely seen, and when she was, she was usually clothed in white. Dickinson's one surviving article of clothing is a white cotton dress, possibly sewn circa 1878–1882.[88] Few of the locals who exchanged messages with Dickinson during her last fifteen years ever saw her in person.[89] Austin and his family began to protect Emily's privacy, deciding that she was not to be a subject of discussion with outsiders.[90] Despite her physical seclusion, however, Dickinson was socially active and expressive through what makes up two-thirds of her surviving notes and letters. When visitors came to either the Homestead or the Evergreens, she would often leave or send over small gifts of poems or flowers.[91] Dickinson also had a good rapport with the children in her life. Mattie Dickinson, the second child of Austin and Sue, later said that "Aunt Emily stood for indulgence."[92] MacGregor (Mac) Jenkins, the son of family friends who later wrote a short article in 1891 called "A Child's Recollection of Emily Dickinson", thought of her as always offering support to the neighborhood children.[92]
When Higginson urged her to come to Boston in 1868 so that they could formally meet for the first time, she declined, writing: "Could it please your convenience to come so far as Amherst I should be very glad, but I do not cross my Father's ground to any House or town".[93] It was not until he came to Amherst in 1870 that they met. Later he referred to her, in the most detailed and vivid physical account of her on record, as "a little plain woman with two smooth bands of reddish hair ... in a very plain & exquisitely clean white piqué & a blue net worsted shawl."[94] He also felt that he never was "with any one who drained my nerve power so much. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her."[95]
Posies and poesies
Scholar Judith Farr notes that Dickinson, during her lifetime, "was known more widely as a gardener, perhaps, than as a poet".[96] Dickinson studied botany from the age of nine and, along with her sister, tended the garden at Homestead.[96] During her lifetime, she assembled a collection of pressed plants in a sixty-six page leather-bound herbarium. It contained 424 pressed flower specimens that she collected, classified, and labeled using the Linnaean system.[97] The Homestead garden was well-known and admired locally in its time. It has not survived but efforts to revive it have begun.[98] Dickinson kept no garden notebooks or plant lists, but a clear impression can be formed from the letters and recollections of friends and family. Her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, remembered "carpets of lily-of-the-valley and pansies, platoons of sweetpeas, hyacinths, enough in May to give all the bees of summer dyspepsia. There were ribbons of peony hedges and drifts of daffodils in season, marigolds to distraction—a butterfly utopia".[99] In particular, Dickinson cultivated scented exotic flowers, writing that she "could inhabit the Spice Isles merely by crossing the dining room to the conservatory, where the plants hang in baskets". Dickinson would often send her friends bunches of flowers with verses attached, but "they valued the posy more than the poetry".[99]
Later life
On June 16, 1874, while in Boston, Edward Dickinson suffered a stroke and died. When the simple funeral was held in the Homestead's entrance hall, Emily stayed in her room with the door cracked open. Neither did she attend the memorial service on June 28.[100] She wrote to Higginson that her father's "Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists."[101] A year later, on June 15, 1875, Emily's mother also suffered a stroke, which produced a partial lateral paralysis and impaired memory. Lamenting her mother's increasing physical as well as mental demands, Emily wrote that "Home is so far from Home".[102]

Though the great Waters sleep,

That they are still the Deep,

We cannot doubt–

No vacillating God

Ignited this Abode

To put it out–
Emily Dickinson, c. 1884[103]

Otis Phillips Lord, an elderly judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from Salem, in 1872 or 1873 became an acquaintance of Dickinson's. After the death of Lord's wife in 1877, his friendship with Dickinson probably became a late-life romance, though as their letters were destroyed, this is surmised.[104] Dickinson found a kindred soul in Lord, especially in terms of shared literary interests; the few letters which survived contain multiple quotations of Shakespeare's work, including the plays Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet and King Lear. In 1880 he gave her Cowden Clarke's Complete Concordance to Shakespeare (1877).[105] Dickinson wrote that "While others go to Church, I go to mine, for are you not my Church, and have we not a Hymn that no one knows but us?"[106] She referred to him as "My lovely Salem"[107] and they wrote to each other religiously every Sunday. Dickinson looked forward to this day greatly; a surviving fragment of a letter written by her states that "Tuesday is a deeply depressed Day".[108]
After being critically ill for several years, Judge Lord died in March 1884. Dickinson referred to him as "our latest Lost".[109] Two years before this, on April 1, 1882, Dickinson's "Shepherd from 'Little Girl'hood", Charles Wadsworth, also had died after a long illness.
Decline and death
Although she continued to write in her last years, Dickinson stopped editing and organizing her poems. She also exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers.[110] Lavinia, who never married, remained at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.

The 1880s were a difficult time for the remaining Dickinsons. Irreconcilably alienated from his wife, Austin fell in love in 1882 with Mabel Loomis Todd, an Amherst College faculty wife who had recently moved to the area. Todd never met Dickinson but was intrigued by her, referring to her as "a lady whom the people call the Myth".[111] Austin distanced himself from his family as his affair continued and his wife became sick with grief.[112] Dickinson's mother died on November 14, 1882. Five weeks later, Dickinson wrote "We were never intimate ... while she was our Mother– but Mines in the same Ground meet by tunneling and when she became our Child, the Affection came."[113] The next year, Austin and Sue's third and youngest child, Gilbert—Emily's favorite—died of typhoid fever.[114]
As death succeeded death, Dickinson found her world upended. In the fall of 1884, she wrote that "The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come."[115] That summer she had seen "a great darkness coming" and fainted while baking in the kitchen. She remained unconscious late into the night and weeks of ill health followed. On November 30, 1885, her feebleness and other symptoms were so worrying that Austin canceled a trip to Boston.[116] She was confined to her bed for a few months, but managed to send a final burst of letters in the spring. What is thought to be her last letter was sent to her cousins, Louise and Frances Norcross, and simply read: "Little Cousins, Called Back. Emily".[117] On May 15, 1886, after several days of worsening symptoms, Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55. Austin wrote in his diary that "the day was awful ... she ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the [afternoon] whistle sounded for six."[118] Dickinson's chief physician gave the cause of death as Bright's disease and its duration as two and a half years.[119]
Lavinia and Austin asked Susan to wash Emily’s body upon her death. Susan also wrote Emily’s obituary for the Springfield Republican, ending it with four lines from one of Emily's poems: "Morns like these, we parted; Noons like these, she rose; Fluttering first, then firmer, To her fair repose." Lavinia was perfectly satisfied that Sue should arrange everything, knowing it would be done lovingly.[120] Dickinson was buried, laid in a white coffin with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a Lady's Slipper orchid, and a "knot of blue field violets" placed about it.[99][121] The funeral service, held in the Homestead's library, was simple and short; Higginson, who had met her only twice, read "No Coward Soul Is Mine", a poem by Emily Brontë that had been a favorite of Dickinson's.[118] At Dickinson's request, her "coffin [was] not driven but carried through fields of buttercups" for burial in the family plot at West Cemetery on Triangle Street.[96]
Publication
Despite Dickinson's prolific writing, fewer than a dozen of her poems were published during her lifetime. After her younger sister Lavinia discovered the collection of nearly 1800 poems, Dickinson's first volume was published four years after her death. Until Thomas H. Johnson published Dickinson's Complete Poems in 1955,[122] Dickinson's poems were considerably edited and altered from their manuscript versions. Since 1890 Dickinson has remained continuously in print.
Contemporary

A few of Dickinson's poems appeared in Samuel Bowles' Springfield Republican between 1858 and 1868. They were published anonymously and heavily edited, with conventionalized punctuation and formal titles.[123] The first poem, "Nobody knows this little rose", may have been published without Dickinson's permission.[124] The Republican also published "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" as "The Snake", "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers–" as "The Sleeping", and "Blazing in the Gold and quenching in Purple" as "Sunset".[125][126] The poem "I taste a liquor never brewed–" is an example of the edited versions; the last two lines in the first stanza were completely rewritten.[125]

Original wording

I taste a liquor never brewed–

From Tankards scooped in Pearl–

Not all the Frankfort Berries

Yield such an Alcohol!
Republican version

I taste a liquor never brewed–

From Tankards scooped in Pearl–

Not Frankfort Berries yield the sense

Such a delirious whirl!
In 1864, several poems were altered and published in Drum Beat, to raise funds for medical care for Union soldiers in the war.[127] Another appeared in April 1864 in the Brooklyn Daily Union.[128]
In the 1870s, Higginson showed Dickinson's poems to Helen Hunt Jackson, who had coincidentally been at the Academy with Dickinson when they were girls.[129] Jackson was deeply involved in the publishing world, and managed to convince Dickinson to publish her poem "Success is counted sweetest" anonymously in a volume called A Masque of Poets.[129] The poem, however, was altered to agree with contemporary taste. It was the last poem published during Dickinson's lifetime.
Posthumous
After Dickinson's death, Lavinia Dickinson kept her promise and burned most of the poet's correspondence. Significantly though, Dickinson had left no instructions about the 40 notebooks and loose sheets gathered in a locked chest.[130] Lavinia recognized the poems' worth and became obsessed with seeing them published.[131] She turned first to her brother's wife and then to Mabel Loomis Todd, her brother's mistress, for assistance.[121] A feud ensued, with the manuscripts divided between the Todd and Dickinson houses, preventing complete publication of Dickinson's poetry for more than half a century.[132]

The first volume of Dickinson's Poems, edited jointly by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, appeared in November 1890.[133] Although Todd claimed that only essential changes were made, the poems were extensively edited to match punctuation and capitalization to late 19th-century standards, with occasional rewordings to reduce Dickinson's obliquity.[134] The first 115-poem volume was a critical and financial success, going through eleven printings in two years.[133] Poems: Second Series followed in 1891, running to five editions by 1893; a third series appeared in 1896. One reviewer, in 1892, wrote: "The world will not rest satisfied till every scrap of her writings, letters as well as literature, has been published".[135]
Nearly a dozen new editions of Dickinson's poetry, whether containing previously unpublished or newly edited poems, were published between 1914 and 1945.[136] Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the daughter of Susan and Austin Dickinson, published collections of her aunt's poetry based on the manuscripts held by her family, whereas Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, published collections based on the manuscripts held by her mother. These competing editions of Dickinson's poetry, often differing in order and structure, ensured that the poet's work was in the public's eye.[137]
The first scholarly publication came in 1955 with a complete new three-volume set edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Forming the basis of later Dickinson scholarship, Johnson's variorum brought all of Dickinson's known poems together for the first time.[138] Johnson's goal was to present the poems very nearly as Dickinson had left them in her manuscripts.[139] They were untitled, only numbered in an approximate chronological sequence, strewn with dashes and irregularly capitalized, and often extremely elliptical in their language.[140] Three years later, Johnson edited and published, along with Theodora Ward, a complete collection of Dickinson's letters, also presented in three volumes.
In 1981, The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson was published. Using the physical evidence of the original papers, the poems were intended to be published in their original order for the first time. Editor Ralph W. Franklin relied on smudge marks, needle punctures and other clues to reassemble the poet's packets.[139] Since then, many critics have argued for thematic unity in these small collections, believing the ordering of the poems to be more than chronological or convenient.
Dickinson biographer Alfred Habegger wrote in My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (2001) that "The consequences of the poet's failure to disseminate her work in a faithful and orderly manner are still very much with us".[141]
Poetry

Dickinson's poems generally fall into three distinct periods, the works in each period having certain general characters in common.
Pre-1861. These are often conventional and sentimental in nature.[142] Thomas H. Johnson, who later published The Poems of Emily Dickinson, was able to date only five of Dickinson's poems before 1858.[143] Two of these are mock valentines done in an ornate and humorous style, and two others are conventional lyrics, one of which is about missing her brother Austin. The fifth poem, which begins "I have a Bird in spring", conveys her grief over the feared loss of friendship and was sent to her friend Sue Gilbert.[143]
1861–1865. This was her most creative period—these poems represent her most vigorous and creative work. Johnson estimated that she composed 86 poems in 1861, 366 in 1862, 141 in 1863, and 174 in 1864. He also believed that during this period, she fully developed her themes of life and mortality.[144]
Post-1866. It is estimated that two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry was written before this year.[144]
Structure and syntax

The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickinson's manuscripts, and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery, combine to create a body of work that is "far more various in its styles and forms than is commonly supposed".[5][145] Dickinson avoids pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter, tetrameter and, less often, dimeter. Sometimes her use of these meters is regular, but oftentimes it is irregular. The regular form that she most often employs is the ballad stanza, a traditional form that is divided into quatrains, using tetrameter for the first and third lines and trimeter for the second and fourth, while rhyming the second and fourth lines (ABCB). Though Dickinson often uses perfect rhymes for lines two and four, she also makes frequent use of slant rhyme.[146] In some of her poems, she varies the meter from the traditional ballad stanza by using trimeter for lines one, two and four, while only using tetrameter for line three.
Since many of her poems were written in traditional ballad stanzas with ABCB rhyme schemes, some of these poems can be sung to fit the melodies of popular folk songs and hymns that also use the common meter, employing alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.[147] Familiar examples of such songs are "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Amazing Grace'".
Dickinson scholar and poet Anthony Hecht finds resonances in Dickinson's poetry not only with hymns and song-forms but also with psalms and riddles, citing the following example: "Who is the East?/ The Yellow Man/ Who may be Purple if he can/ That carries the Sun./ Who is the West?/ The Purple Man/ Who may be Yellow if He can/ That lets Him out again."[145]
Late 20th-century scholars are "deeply interested" by Dickinson's highly individual use of punctuation and lineation (line lengths and line breaks).[130] Following the publication of one of the few poems that appeared in her lifetime– "A narrow Fellow in the Grass", published as "The Snake" in the Republican– Dickinson complained that the edited punctuation (an added comma and a full stop substitution for the original dash) altered the meaning of the entire poem.[125]

Original wording

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

Occasionally rides–

You may have met Him– did you not

His notice sudden is–
Republican version[125]

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

Occasionally rides–

You may have met Him– did you not,

His notice sudden is.
As Farr points out, "snakes instantly notice you"; Dickinson's version captures the "breathless immediacy" of the encounter; and The Republican's punctuation renders "her lines more commonplace".[130] With the increasingly close focus on Dickinson's structures and syntax has come a growing appreciation that they are "aesthetically based".[130] Although Johnson's landmark 1955 edition of poems was relatively unaltered from the original, later scholars critiqued it for deviating from the style and layout of Dickinson's manuscripts. Meaningful distinctions, these scholars assert, can be drawn from varying lengths and angles of dash, and differing arrangements of text on the page.[148] Several volumes have attempted to render Dickinson's handwritten dashes using many typographic symbols of varying length and angle. R. W. Franklin's 1998 variorum edition of the poems provided alternate wordings to those chosen by Johnson, in a more limited editorial intervention. Franklin also used typeset dashes of varying length to approximate the manuscripts' dashes more closely.[139]
Major themes
Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her themes, her work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded, alongside Emerson (whose poems Dickinson admired), as a Transcendentalist.[149] However, Farr disagrees with this analysis, saying that Dickinson's "relentlessly measuring mind ... deflates the airy elevation of the Transcendental".[150] Apart from the major themes discussed below, Dickinson's poetry frequently uses humor, puns, irony and satire.[151]
Flowers and gardens: Farr notes that Dickinson's "poems and letters almost wholly concern flowers" and that allusions to gardens often refer to an "imaginative realm ... wherein flowers [are] often emblems for actions and emotions".[152] She associates some flowers, like gentians and anemones, with youth and humility; others with prudence and insight.[152] Her poems were often sent to friends with accompanying letters and nosegays.[152] Farr notes that one of Dickinson's earlier poems, written about 1859, appears to "conflate her poetry itself with the posies": "My nosegays are for Captives–/ Dim– long expectant eyes–/ Fingers denied the plucking,/ Patient till Paradise–/ To such, if they sh'd whisper/ Of morning and the moor–/ They bear no other errand,/ And I, no other prayer".[152]
The Master poems: Dickinson left a large number of poems addressed to "Signor", "Sir" and "Master", who is characterized as Dickinson's "lover for all eternity".[153] These confessional poems are often "searing in their self-inquiry" and "harrowing to the reader" and typically take their metaphors from texts and paintings of Dickinson's day.[153] The Dickinson family themselves believed these poems were addressed to actual individuals but this view is frequently rejected by scholars. Farr, for example, contends that the Master is an unattainable composite figure, "human, with specific characteristics, but godlike" and speculates that Master may be a "kind of Christian muse".[153]
Morbidity: Dickinson's poems reflect her "early and lifelong fascination" with illness, dying and death.[154] Perhaps surprisingly for a New England spinster, her poems allude to death by many methods: "crucifixion, drowning, hanging, suffocation, freezing, premature burial, shooting, stabbing and guillotinage".[154] She reserved her sharpest insights into the "death blow aimed by God" and the "funeral in the brain", often reinforced by images of thirst and starvation. Dickinson scholar Vivian Pollak considers these references an autobiographical reflection of Dickinson's "thirsting-starving persona", an outward expression of her needy self-image as small, thin and frail.[154] Dickinson's most psychologically complex poems explore the theme that the loss of hunger for life causes the death of self and place this at "the interface of murder and suicide".[154]
Gospel poems: Throughout her life, Dickinson wrote poems reflecting a preoccupation with the teachings of Jesus Christ and, indeed, many are addressed to him.[155] She stresses the Gospels' contemporary pertinence and recreates them, often with "wit and American colloquial language".[155] Scholar Dorothy Oberhaus finds that the "salient feature uniting Christian poets ... is their reverential attention to the life of Jesus Christ" and contends that Dickinson's deep structures place her in the "poetic tradition of Christian devotion" alongside Hopkins, Eliot and Auden.[155] In a Nativity poem, Dickinson combines lightness and wit to revisit an ancient theme: "The Savior must have been/ A docile Gentleman–/ To come so far so cold a Day/ For little Fellowmen/ The Road to Bethlehem/ Since He and I were Boys/ Was leveled, but for that twould be/ A rugged billion Miles–".[155]
The Undiscovered Continent: Academic Suzanne Juhasz considers that Dickinson saw the mind and spirit as tangible visitable places and that for much of her life she lived within them.[156] Often, this intensely private place is referred to as the "undiscovered continent" and the "landscape of the spirit" and embellished with nature imagery. At other times, the imagery is darker and forbidding—castles or prisons, complete with corridors and rooms—to create a dwelling place of "oneself" where one resides with one's other selves.[156] An example that brings together many of these ideas is: "Me from Myself– to banish–/ Had I Art–/ Impregnable my Fortress/ Unto All Heart–/ But since myself—assault Me–/ How have I peace/ Except by subjugating/ Consciousness./ And since We're mutual Monarch/ How this be/ Except by Abdication–/ Me– of Me?".[156]
Reception

The surge of posthumous publication gave Dickinson's poetry its first public exposure. Backed by Higginson and with a favorable notice from William Dean Howells, an editor of Harper's Magazine, the poetry received mixed reviews after it was first published in 1890. Higginson himself stated in his preface to the first edition of Dickinson's published work that the poetry's quality "is that of extraordinary grasp and insight",[157] albeit "without the proper control and chastening" that the experience of publishing during her lifetime might have conferred.[158] His judgment that her opus was "incomplete and unsatisfactory" would be echoed in the essays of the New Critics in the 1930s.
Maurice Thompson, who was literary editor of The Independent for twelve years, noted in 1891 that her poetry had "a strange mixture of rare individuality and originality".[159] Some critics hailed Dickinson's effort, but disapproved of her unusual non-traditional style. Andrew Lang, a British writer, dismissed Dickinson's work, stating that "if poetry is to exist at all, it really must have form and grammar, and must rhyme when it professes to rhyme. The wisdom of the ages and the nature of man insist on so much".[160] Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a poet and novelist, equally dismissed Dickinson's poetic technique in The Atlantic Monthly in January 1892: "It is plain that Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and grotesque fancy. She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by the mannerism of Emerson ... But the incoherence and formlessness of her— versicles are fatal ... an eccentric, dreamy, half-educated recluse in an out-of-the-way New England village (or anywhere else) cannot with impunity set at defiance the laws of gravitation and grammar".[161]
Critical attention to Dickinson's poetry was meager from 1897 to the early 1920s.[162] By the start of the 20th century, interest in her poetry became broader in scope and some critics began to consider Dickinson as essentially modern. Rather than seeing Dickinson's poetic styling as a result of lack of knowledge or skill, modern critics believed the irregularities were consciously artistic.[163] In a 1915 essay, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant called the poet's inspiration "daring" and named her "one of the rarest flowers the sterner New England land ever bore".[164] With the growing popularity of modernist poetry in the 1920s, Dickinson's failure to conform to 19th-century poetic form was no longer surprising nor distasteful to new generations of readers. Dickinson was suddenly referred to by various critics as a great woman poet, and a cult following began to form.[165]
In the 1930s, a number of the New Critics– among them R. P. Blackmur, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks and Yvor Winters– appraised the significance of Dickinson's poetry. As critic Roland Hagenbüchle pointed out, their "affirmative and prohibitive tenets turned out to be of special relevance to Dickinson scholarship".[166] Blackmur, in an attempt to focus and clarify the major claims for and against the poet's greatness, wrote in a landmark 1937 critical essay: "... she was a private poet who wrote as indefatigably as some women cook or knit. Her gift for words and the cultural predicament of her time drove her to poetry instead of antimacassars ... She came... at the right time for one kind of poetry: the poetry of sophisticated, eccentric vision."[167]
The second wave of feminism created greater cultural sympathy for her as a female poet. In the first collection of critical essays on Dickinson from a feminist perspective, she is heralded as the greatest woman poet in the English language.[168] Biographers and theorists of the past tended to separate Dickinson's roles as a woman and a poet. For example, George Whicher wrote in his 1952 book This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson, "Perhaps as a poet [Dickinson] could find the fulfillment she had missed as a woman." Feminist criticism, on the other hand, declares that there is a necessary and powerful conjunction between Dickinson being a woman and a poet.[169] Adrienne Rich theorized in Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson (1976) that Dickinson's identity as a woman poet brought her power: "[she] chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed. ... She carefully selected her society and controlled the disposal of her time ... neither eccentric nor quaint; she was determined to survive, to use her powers, to practice necessary economics."[170]
Some scholars question the poet's sexuality, theorizing that the numerous letters and poems that were dedicated to Susan Gilbert Dickinson indicate a lesbian romance, and speculating about how this may have influenced her poetry.[171] Critics such as John Cody, Lillian Faderman, Vivian R. Pollak, Paula Bennett, Judith Farr, Ellen Louise Hart, and Martha Nell Smith have argued that Susan was the central erotic relationship in Dickinson's life.[172]
Legacy
In the early 20th century, Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Millicent Todd Bingham kept the achievement of Emily Dickinson alive. Bianchi promoted Dickinson's poetic achievement. Bianchi inherited The Evergreens as well as the copyright for her aunt's poetry from her parents, publishing works such as Emily Dickinson Face to Face and Letters of Emily Dickinson, which stoked public curiosity about her aunt. Bianchi's books perpetrated legends about her aunt in the context of family tradition, personal recollection and correspondence. In contrast, Millicent Todd Bingham's took a more objective and realistic approach to the poet.[173]
Emily Dickinson is now considered a powerful and persistent figure in American culture.[174] Although much of the early reception concentrated on Dickinson's eccentric and secluded nature, she has become widely acknowledged as an innovative, proto-modernist poet.[175] As early as 1891, William Dean Howells wrote that "If nothing else had come out of our life but this strange poetry, we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world, and could not be left out of any record of it."[176] Critic Harold Bloom has placed her alongside Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Hart Crane as a major American poet,[177] and in 1994 listed her among the 26 central writers of Western civilization.[178]
Dickinson is taught in American literature and poetry classes in the United States from middle school to college. Her poetry is frequently anthologized and has been used as text for art songs by composers such as Aaron Copland, Nick Peros, John Adams and Michael Tilson Thomas.[179] Several schools have been established in her name; for example, Emily Dickinson Elementary Schools exist in Bozeman, Montana,[180]Redmond, Washington,[181] and New York City.[182] A few literary journals—including The Emily Dickinson Journal, the official publication of the Emily Dickinson International Society—have been founded to examine her work.[183] An 8-cent commemorative stamp in honor of Dickinson was issued by the United States Postal Service on August 28, 1971 as the second stamp in the "American Poet" series.[184] Dickinson was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.[185] A one-woman play titled The Belle of Amherst appeared on Broadway in 1976, winning several awards; it was later adapted for television.[186]
Dickinson's herbarium, which is now held in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, was published in 2006 as Emily Dickinson's Herbarium by Harvard University Press.[187] The original work was compiled by Dickinson during her years at Amherst Academy, and consists of 424 pressed specimens of plants arranged on 66 pages of a bound album. A digital facsimile of the herbarium is available online.[188] The town of Amherst Jones Library's Special Collections department has an Emily Dickinson Collection consisting of approximately seven thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, family correspondence, scholarly articles and books, newspaper clippings, theses, plays, photographs and contemporary artwork and prints.[189] The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College has substantial holdings of Dickinson's manuscripts and letters as well as a lock of Dickinson's hair and the original of the only positively identified image of the poet. In 1965, in recognition of Dickinson's growing stature as a poet, the Homestead was purchased by Amherst College. It opened to the public for tours, and also served as a faculty residence for many years. The Emily Dickinson Museum was created in 2003 when ownership of the Evergreens, which had been occupied by Dickinson family heirs until 1988, was transferred to the college.[190]

The Dickinson Homestead today, now the Emily Dickinson Museum
Emily Dickinson commemorative stamp, 1971

Modern influence and inspiration

Emily Dickinson's life and works have been the source of inspiration to artists, particularly to feminist-oriented artists, of a variety of mediums. A few notable examples are as follows:
The feminist artwork The Dinner Party, by Judy Chicago, first exhibited in 1979, features a place setting for Dickinson.[191][192]
Jane Campion's film The Piano and its novelization (co-authored by Kate Pullinger) were inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson as well as the novels by the Bronte Sisters.[193]
A character who is a literary scholar at a fictional New England college in the comic campus novel by Pamela Hansford Johnson Night and Silence Who Is Here?[194] is intent on proving that Emily Dickinson was a secret dipsomaniac. His obsession costs him his job.
The 2012 book The Emily Dickinson Reader by Paul Legault is an English-to-English translation of her complete poems published by McSweeney's.[195]
The 2016 film A Quiet Passion by Terence Davies is a biography of Dickinson, in which Cynthia Nixon plays the poet.
Dickinson's work has been set by numerous composers including Aaron Copland[196], Samuel Barber, Elliot Carter, Libby Larsen, Peter Seabourne, Michael Tilson Thomas and Judith Weir.[197]
The 2018 film Wild Nights with Emily is a comedy about Dickinson's romantic relationship with Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.
A public garden is named in her honor in Paris: 'square Emily-Dickinson', in the 20th arrondissement of the French capital.[198]
Translation
Emily Dickinson's poetry has been translated into languages including French, Spanish, Farsi, Kurdish, Georgian and Russian. A few examples of these translations are the following:
The Queen of Bashful Violets, a Kurdish translation by Madeh Piryonesi published in 2016.[199][200][201]
French translation by Charlotte Melançon which includes 40 poems.[202]
Farsi translations: Three Farsi translations of Emily Dickinson are available from Saeed Saeedpoor, Madeh Piryonesi and Okhovat.[199][203]
See also

List of Emily Dickinson poems

Notes

Editions of poetry
Franklin, R. W. (ed.). 1999. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Belknap Press. ISBN0-674-67624-6.
Johnson, Thomas H. (ed.). 1960. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Secondary sources

Bianchi, Martha Dickinson. 1970. Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminiscences. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.
Blake, Caesar R. (ed). 1964. The Recognition of Emily Dickinson: Selected Criticism Since 1890. Ed. Caesar R. Blake. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Bloom, Harold. 1999. Emily Dickinson. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN0-7910-5106-4.
Bloom, Harold. 1994. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Buckingham, Willis J. (ed). 1989. Emily Dickinson's Reception in the 1890s: A Documentary History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN0-8229-3604-6.
Comment, Kristin M. 2001. "Dickinson's Bawdy: Shakespeare and Sexual Symbolism in Emily Dickinson's Writing to Susan Dickinson". Legacy. 18(2). pp.167–181.
Crumbley, Paul. 1997. Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in Emily Dickinson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN0-8131-1988-X.
D'Arienzo, Daria. 2006. , Amherst Magazine. Winter 2006. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
Farr, Judith (ed). 1996. Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice Hall International Paperback Editions. ISBN978-0-13-033524-1.
Farr, Judith. 2005. The Gardens of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England: Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0-674-01829-7.
Ford, Thomas W. 1966. Heaven Beguiles the Tired: Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson. University of Alabama Press.
Franklin, R. W. 1998. The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN1-55849-155-4.
Gordon, Lyndall. 2010. Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. Viking. ISBN978-0-670-02193-2.
Grabher, Gudrun, Roland Hagenbüchle and Cristanne Miller. 1998. The Emily Dickinson Handbook. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Habegger, Alfred. 2001. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Random House. ISBN978-0-679-44986-7.
Roland Hagenbüchle: , Emerson Society Quarterly, 1974
Hecht, Anthony. 1996. "The Riddles of Emily Dickinson" in Farr (1996) 149–162.
Juhasz, Suzanne (ed). 1983. Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN0-253-32170-0.
Juhasz, Suzanne. 1996. "The Landscape of the Spirit" in Farr (1996) 130–140.
Knapp, Bettina L. 1989. Emily Dickinson. New York: Continuum Publishing.
Martin, Wendy (ed). 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-00118-8.
McNeil, Helen. 1986. Emily Dickinson. London: Virago Press. ISBN0-394-74766-6.
Mitchell, Domhnall Mitchell and Maria Stuart. 2009. The International Reception of Emily Dickinson. New York: Continuum. ISBN0-8264-9715-2.
Murray, Aífe. 2010. Maid as Muse: How Domestic Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language. University Press of New England. ISBN978-1-58465-674-6.
Murray, Aífe. 1996. "Kitchen Table Poetics: Maid Margaret Maher and Her Poet Emily Dickinson," The Emily Dickinson Journal. 5(2). pp.285–296.
Oberhaus, Dorothy Huff. 1996. "'Tender pioneer': Emily Dickinson's Poems on the Life of Christ" in Farr (1996) 105–119.
Parker, Peter. 2007. , The Daily Telegraph, June 29, 2007. Retrieved January 18, 2008.
Pickard, John B. 1967. Emily Dickinson: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Pollak, Vivian R. 1996. "Thirst and Starvation in Emily Dickinson's Poetry" in Farr (1996) 62–75.
Sewall, Richard B.. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN0-674-53080-2.
Smith, Martha Nell. 1992. Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN0-292-77666-7.
Stocks, Kenneth. 1988. Emily Dickinson and the Modern Consciousness: A Poet of Our Time. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Walsh, John Evangelist. 1971. The Hidden Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wells, Anna Mary. 1929. "Early Criticism of Emily Dickinson", American Literature, Vol. 1, No. 3. (November 1929).
Wilson, Edmund. 1962. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN0-393-31256-9.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. 1986. Emily Dickinson. New York. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN0-394-54418-8.

Further reading
Archival sources
Emily Dickinson Papers, 1844–1891 (3 microfilm reels) are housed at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University.

Library resources about
 Main Page
By Main Page

 at Curlie
 at Project Gutenberg
 at Internet Archive
 at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

, at the Poetry Foundation.

 The Homestead and the Evergreens, Amherst, Massachusetts
, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
, Galatea Collection, Boston Public Library


Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a prolific English-American author, political journalist and literary critic. His books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. Recognized as a public intellectual, he was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. Hitchens was a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets.
Books
Sole author
1984  Cyprus. Quartet. Revised editions as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso). ISBN978-0-704-32436-7
1987  Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles. Chatto and Windus (UK)/Hill and Wang (US, 1988) / 1997 UK Verso edition as The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns). Reissued and updated 2008 as The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification, Verso. ISBN978-0-809-04189-3
1990  Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Reissued 2004, with a new introduction, as Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, Nation Books, ISBN1-56025-592-7
1999 No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. Verso. Reissued as No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family in 2000. ISBN978-1-859-84736-7
2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso. ISBN1-85984-631-9
2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian. Basic Books. ISBN0-465-03033-5
2002 Why Orwell Matters, Basic Books (US)/UK edition as Orwell's Victory, Allen Lane/Penguin Press. ISBN0-465-03050-5
2005 Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN0-06-059896-4
2006 Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography. Books That Shook the World/Atlantic Books, ISBN1-84354-513-6
2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. Atlantic Books, ISBN978-1-84354-586-6
2007 The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer. Perseus Publishing. ISBN978-0-306-81608-6 (editor)
2010 Hitch-22 Some Confessions and Contradictions: A Memoir . Hachette Book Group. ISBN978-0-446-54033-9 (published by Allen and Unwin in Australia in May 2010 with the shorter title: Hitch-22. A Memoir.) ISBN978-1-74175-962-4
2012 Mortality. Atlantic. ISBN978-1-4555-0275-2
Pamphlets
1971 Karl Marx and The Paris Commune. Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. ISBN0283484829
1990  The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish. Chatto & Windus, 1990.
1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Verso.
2003 A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq. Plume Books. Originally released as Regime Change (Penguin).
2011 The Enemy. Amazon Digital Services.
Essays

1988  Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports. Hill and Wang (US)/Chatto and Windus (UK).
1993  For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports. Verso, ISBN0-86091-435-6
2000 Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere. Verso
2004 Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays. Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN1-56025-580-3
2011 Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. Twelve. UK edition as Arguably: Selected Prose. Atlantic.
2015 And Yet... Essays, Simon & Schuster.
2016 Talks on Atheism: Collected Speeches by Christopher Hitchens, Amazon Media, ISBN978-1-944541-60-6
Collaborations
1976  Callaghan, The Road to Number Ten (with Peter Kellner). Cassell, ISBN0-304-29768-2
1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said). Verso, ISBN0-86091-887-4. Reissued, 2001.
1994 When Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds (with Ed Kashi). Pantheon Books.
1994 International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-1995 (with Adam Bartos). Verso.
2000 Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Graydon Carter and David Friend (editors). Viking Studio.
Co-author or co-editor
2002 Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing (co-editor, with Christopher Caldwell).
2008 Is Christianity Good for the World? – A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson). Canon Press, ISBN1-59128-053-2.
2008 Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left (co-author, with other contributions edited by Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman (sociologist) ). New York University Press.
2010 The Best American Essays 2010 (co-editor with Robert Atwan). Mariner Books.
2011 Hitchens vs. Blair: Be it Resolved, Religion is a Force of Good in the World (co-author with Tony Blair). House of Anansi Press.
Contributor
2005 Religion, Culture, and International Conflict: A Conversation, Michael Cromartie (editor). Rowman & Littlefield.
2005 A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, Thomas Cushman (editor). University of California Press, ISBN0-520-24555-5
2011 The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism, Windsor Mann (editor). Da Capo Press.
Book introductions, forewords and prefaces
1971  Karl Marx and the Paris Commune, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Authors). Introduction. Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd.
1990 The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane - From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, Robert I. Friedman (Author). Foreword. Faber and Faber.
1992 Money for Old Rope, Charles Glass (Author). Introduction. Picador.
1992 The Greek Socialist Experiment - Papandreou's Greece 1981-1989, Theodore C. Kariotis (Editor). Introduction. Pella.
1994 When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds, Ed Kashi (Author). Introduction. Pantheon.
1996 Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, Edward Said (Author). Preface. Vintage.
1996 American Notes, Charles Dickens (Author). Introduction. Modern Library.
1997 In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel (Authors). Foreword to Paperback Edition. Monthly Review Press.
1997 Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies' ' , Israel Shahak(Author), Pluto Press, London, . Foreword to paperback edition.
1999 A Handbook on Hanging, Charles Duff (Author). Introduction. New York Review of Books.
2000 Scoop, Evelyn Waugh (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2000 Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995, Joe Sacco (Author). Foreword. Fantagraphics Books.
2000 1968: War & Democracy, Eugene J. McCarthy (Author). Foreword. Lone Oak Press.
2000 Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Graydon Carter and David Friend (Editors). Introduction. Viking Studio.
2001 Kosovo: Background to a War, Stephen Schwartz (Author). Foreword. Anthem Press.
2001 The Mating Season, P. G. Wodehouse (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2001 Orwell in Spain, George Orwell (Author), Peter Davison (Editor). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition
2002 Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime, David R. Dow and Mark Dow (Editors). Foreword. Routledge.
2002 From Russia, With Love, Dr. No, and Goldfinger, Ian Fleming (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2003 Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell (Author). Introduction. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
2003 The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (Author). Introduction. Penguin Group.
2004 Orient Express, Graham Greene (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2004 Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford (Author). Introduction. New York Review of Books.
2004 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (Author). Foreword. HarperCollins.
2004 Choice: The Best of Reason, Nick Gillespie (Editor). Foreword. BenBella Books.
2005 House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (Author). Introduction. Everyman's Library.
2007 Our Man in Havana, Graham Greene (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2007 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, Rebecca West (Author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2008 Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, Kingsley Amis (Author). Introduction. Bloomsbury USA.
2008  God: The Failed Hypothesis- How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, Victor J. Stenger (Author). Foreword to Paperback Edition. New York: Prometheus Books.
2008 Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Author). Introduction to Paperback Edition. Simon and Schuster.
2009 First in Peace: How George Washington Set the Course for America, Conor Cruise O'Brien (Author). Introduction. Da Capo Press.
2009 Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson, Anita Thompson (Editor). Introduction to Paperback Edition. Da Capo Press.
2009 Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past and Present, Adam Begley (Author), Edward Sorel (Illustrator). Introduction. Crown Archetype.
2010 The Three Hostages, John Buchan (Author). Introduction. Polygon.
2010 Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft (Author), S. T. Joshi (Editor). Foreword. Sporting Gentlemen.
2010 The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969, Christopher Isherwood (Author). Foreword. Harper.
2010 Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud (Author). Introduction. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
2012 Diaries, George Orwell (Author). Introduction. Liverlight.
Reviews
 [Online title of this review is 'Hemingway's libidinous feast']. Reviews:
Dedicatee
Books dedicated to Christopher Hitchens:
Richard Dawkins, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, Bantam Press, 2017 (ISBN978-0-593-07751-1). "In memory of Christopher Hitchens".


Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a cofactor found in all living cells. The compound is called a dinucleotide because it consists of two nucleotides joined through their phosphate groups. One nucleotide contains an adenine nucleobase and the other nicotinamide. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide exists in two forms: an oxidized and reduced form abbreviated as NAD+ and NADH respectively.
In metabolism, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is involved in redox reactions, carrying electrons from one reaction to another. The cofactor is, therefore, found in two forms in cells: NAD+ is an oxidizing agent– it accepts electrons from other molecules and becomes reduced. This reaction forms NADH, which can then be used as a reducing agent to donate electrons. These electron transfer reactions are the main function of NAD. However, it is also used in other cellular processes, most notably a substrate of enzymes that add or remove chemical groups from proteins, in posttranslational modifications. Because of the importance of these functions, the enzymes involved in NAD metabolism are targets for drug discovery.
In organisms, NAD can be synthesized from simple building-blocks (de novo) from the amino acids tryptophan or aspartic acid. In an alternative fashion, more complex components of the coenzymes are taken up from food as niacin. Similar compounds are released by reactions that break down the structure of NAD. These preformed components then pass through a salvage pathway that recycles them back into the active form. Some NAD is converted into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP); the chemistry of this related coenzyme is similar to that of NAD, but it has different roles in metabolism.
Although NAD+ is written with a superscript plus sign because of the formal charge on a particular nitrogen atom, at physiological pH for the most part it is actually a singly charged anion (charge of minus 1), while NADH is a doubly charged anion, because of the two bridging phosphate groups.
Physical and chemical properties

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, like all dinucleotide</i>s, consists of two nucleosides joined by a pair of bridging phosphate groups. The nucleosides each contain a ribose ring, one with adenine attached to the first carbon atom (the 1' position) and the other with nicotinamide at this position. The nicotinamide moiety can be attached in two orientations to this anomeric carbon atom. Because of these two possible structures, the compound exists as two diastereomers. It is the β-nicotinamide diastereomer of NAD+ that is found in organisms. These nucleotides are joined together by a bridge of two phosphate groups through the 5' carbons.[1]

In metabolism, the compound accepts or donates electrons in redox reactions.[2] Such reactions (summarized in formula below) involve the removal of two hydrogen atoms from the reactant (R), in the form of a hydride ion (H−), and a proton (H+). The proton is released into solution, while the reductant RH2 is oxidized and NAD+ reduced to NADH by transfer of the hydride to the nicotinamide ring.
RH2 + NAD+ → NADH + H+ + R;
From the hydride electron pair, one electron is transferred to the positively charged nitrogen of the nicotinamide ring of NAD+, and the second hydrogen atom transferred to the C4 carbon atom opposite this nitrogen. The midpoint potential of the NAD+/NADH redox pair is −0.32volts, which makes NADH a strong reducing agent.[3] The reaction is easily reversible, when NADH reduces another molecule and is re-oxidized to NAD+. This means the coenzyme can continuously cycle between the NAD+ and NADH forms without being consumed.[1]
In appearance, all forms of this coenzyme are white amorphous powders that are hygroscopic and highly water-soluble.[4] The solids are stable if stored dry and in the dark. Solutions of NAD+ are colorless and stable for about a week at 4°C and neutral pH, but decompose rapidly in acids or alkalis. Upon decomposition, they form products that are enzyme inhibitors.[5]

Both NAD+ and NADH strongly absorb ultraviolet light because of the adenine. For example, peak absorption of NAD+ is at a wavelength of 259nanometers (nm), with an extinction coefficient of 16,900M−1cm−1. NADH also absorbs at higher wavelengths, with a second peak in UV absorption at 339nm with an extinction coefficient of 6,220M−1cm−1.[6] This difference in the ultraviolet absorption spectra between the oxidized and reduced forms of the coenzymes at higher wavelengths makes it simple to measure the conversion of one to another in enzyme assays– by measuring the amount of UV absorption at 340nm using a spectrophotometer.[6]
NAD+ and NADH also differ in their fluorescence. NADH in solution has an emission peak at 460nm and a fluorescence lifetime of 0.4nanoseconds, while the oxidized form of the coenzyme does not fluoresce.[7] The properties of the fluorescence signal changes when NADH binds to proteins, so these changes can be used to measure dissociation constants, which are useful in the study of enzyme kinetics.[7][8] These changes in fluorescence are also used to measure changes in the redox state of living cells, through fluorescence microscopy.[9]
Concentration and state in cells
In rat liver, the total amount of NAD+ and NADH is approximately 1μmole per gram of wet weight, about 10 times the concentration of NADP+ and NADPH in the same cells.[10] The actual concentration of NAD+ in cell cytosol is harder to measure, with recent estimates in animal cells ranging around 0.3mM,[11][12] and approximately 1.0 to 2.0mM in yeast.[13] However, more than 80% of NADH fluorescence in mitochondria is from bound form, so the concentration in solution is much lower.[14]
Data for other compartments in the cell are limited, although in the mitochondrion the concentration of NAD+ is similar to that in the cytosol.[12] This NAD+ is carried into the mitochondrion by a specific membrane transport protein, since the coenzyme cannot diffuse across membranes.[15]
The balance between the oxidized and reduced forms of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is called the NAD+/NADH ratio. This ratio is an important component of what is called the redox state of a cell, a measurement that reflects both the metabolic activities and the health of cells.[16] The effects of the NAD+/NADH ratio are complex, controlling the activity of several key enzymes, including glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase and pyruvate dehydrogenase. In healthy mammalian tissues, estimates of the ratio between free NAD+ and NADH in the cytoplasm typically lie around 700; the ratio is thus favourable for oxidative reactions.[17][18] The ratio of total NAD+/NADH is much lower, with estimates ranging from 3–10 in mammals.[19] In contrast, the NADP+/NADPH ratio is normally about 0.005, so NADPH is the dominant form of this coenzyme.[20] These different ratios are key to the different metabolic roles of NADH and NADPH.
Biosynthesis
NAD+ is synthesized through two metabolic pathways. It is produced either in a de novo pathway from amino acids or in salvage pathways by recycling preformed components such as nicotinamide back to NAD+.
De novo production

Most organisms synthesize NAD+ from simple components.[2] The specific set of reactions differs among organisms, but a common feature is the generation of quinolinic acid (QA) from an amino acid—either tryptophan (Trp) in animals and some bacteria, or aspartic acid (Asp) in some bacteria and plants.[21][22] The quinolinic acid is converted to nicotinic acid mononucleotide (NaMN) by transfer of a phosphoribose moiety. An adenylate moiety is then transferred to form nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide (NaAD). Finally, the nicotinic acid moiety in NaAD is amidated to a nicotinamide (Nam) moiety, forming nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.[2]
In a further step, some NAD+ is converted into NADP+ by NAD+ kinase, which phosphorylates NAD+.[23] In most organisms, this enzyme uses ATP as the source of the phosphate group, although several bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and a hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus horikoshii, use inorganic polyphosphate as an alternative phosphoryl donor.[24][25]

Salvage pathways
Besides assembling NAD+ de novo from simple amino acid precursors, cells also salvage preformed compounds containing a pyridine base. The three vitamin precursors used in these salvage metabolic pathways are nicotinic acid (NA), nicotinamide (Nam) and nicotinamide riboside (NR).[2] These compounds can be taken up from the diet and are termed vitamin B3 or niacin. However, these compounds are also produced within cells and by digestion of cellular NAD+. Some of the enzymes involved in these salvage pathways appear to be concentrated in the cell nucleus, which may compensate for the high level of reactions that consume NAD+ in this organelle.[26] There are some reports that mammalian cells can take up extracellular NAD+ from their surroundings,[27] and both nicotinamide and nicotinamide riboside can be absorbed from the gut.[28]
Despite the presence of the de novo pathway, the salvage reactions are essential in humans; a lack of niacin in the diet causes the vitamin deficiency disease pellagra.[29] This high requirement for NAD+ results from the constant consumption of the coenzyme in reactions such as posttranslational modifications, since the cycling of NAD+ between oxidized and reduced forms in redox reactions does not change the overall levels of the coenzyme.[2]
The salvage pathways used in microorganisms differ from those of mammals.[30] Some pathogens, such as the yeast Candida glabrata and the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae are NAD+ auxotrophs– they cannot synthesize NAD+– but possess salvage pathways and thus are dependent on external sources of NAD+ or its precursors.[31][32] Even more surprising is the intracellular pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis, which lacks recognizable candidates for any genes involved in the biosynthesis or salvage of both NAD+ and NADP+, and must acquire these coenzymes from its host.[33]
Functions

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide has several essential roles in metabolism. It acts as a coenzyme in redox reactions, as a donor of ADP-ribose moieties in ADP-ribosylation reactions, as a precursor of the second messenger molecule cyclic ADP-ribose, as well as acting as a substrate for bacterial DNA ligases and a group of enzymes called sirtuins that use NAD+ to remove acetyl groups from proteins. In addition to these metabolic functions, NAD+ emerges as an adenine nucleotide that can be released from cells spontaneously and by regulated mechanisms,[35][36] and can therefore have important extracellular roles.[36]
Oxidoreductase binding of NAD

The main role of NAD+ in metabolism is the transfer of electrons from one molecule to another. Reactions of this type are catalyzed by a large group of enzymes called oxidoreductases. The correct names for these enzymes contain the names of both their substrates: for example NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase catalyzes the oxidation of NADH by coenzyme Q.[37] However, these enzymes are also referred to as dehydrogenases or reductases, with NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase commonly being called NADH dehydrogenase or sometimes coenzyme Q reductase.[38]
There are many different superfamilies of enzymes that bind NAD+ / NADH. One of the most common superfamilies include a structural motif known as the Rossmann fold.[39][40] The motif is named after Michael Rossmann who was the first scientist to notice how common this structure is within nucleotide-binding proteins.[41]
An example of a NAD-binding bacterial enzyme involved in amino acid metabolism that does not have Rossmann fold: .[42]

When bound in the active site of an oxidoreductase, the nicotinamide ring of the coenzyme is positioned so that it can accept a hydride from the other substrate. Depending on the enzyme, the hydride donor is positioned either "above" or "below" the plane of the planar C4 carbon, as defined in the figure. Class A oxidoreductases transfer the atom from above; class B enzymes transfer it from below. Since the C4 carbon that accepts the hydrogen is prochiral, this can be exploited in enzyme kinetics to give information about the enzyme's mechanism. This is done by mixing an enzyme with a substrate that has deuterium atoms substituted for the hydrogens, so the enzyme will reduce NAD+ by transferring deuterium rather than hydrogen. In this case, an enzyme can produce one of two stereoisomers of NADH.[43]
Despite the similarity in how proteins bind the two coenzymes, enzymes almost always show a high level of specificity for either NAD+ or NADP+.[44] This specificity reflects the distinct metabolic roles of the respective coenzymes, and is the result of distinct sets of amino acid residues in the two types of coenzyme-binding pocket. For instance, in the active site of NADP-dependent enzymes, an ionic bond is formed between a basic amino acid side-chain and the acidic phosphate group of NADP+. On the converse, in NAD-dependent enzymes the charge in this pocket is reversed, preventing NADP+ from binding. However, there are a few exceptions to this general rule, and enzymes such as aldose reductase, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, and methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase can use both coenzymes in some species.[45]
Role in redox metabolism

The redox reactions catalyzed by oxidoreductases are vital in all parts of metabolism, but one particularly important area where these reactions occur is in the release of energy from nutrients. Here, reduced compounds such as glucose and fatty acids are oxidized, thereby releasing energy. This energy is transferred to NAD+ by reduction to NADH, as part of beta oxidation, glycolysis, and the citric acid cycle. In eukaryotes the electrons carried by the NADH that is produced in the cytoplasm are transferred into the mitochondrion (to reduce mitochondrial NAD+) by mitochondrial shuttles, such as the malate-aspartate shuttle.[46] The mitochondrial NADH is then oxidized in turn by the electron transport chain, which pumps protons across a membrane and generates ATP through oxidative phosphorylation.[47] These shuttle systems also have the same transport function in chloroplasts.[48]
Since both the oxidized and reduced forms of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide are used in these linked sets of reactions, the cell maintains significant concentrations of both NAD+ and NADH, with the high NAD+/NADH ratio allowing this coenzyme to act as both an oxidizing and a reducing agent.[49] In contrast, the main function of NADPH is as a reducing agent in anabolism, with this coenzyme being involved in pathways such as fatty acid synthesis and photosynthesis. Since NADPH is needed to drive redox reactions as a strong reducing agent, the NADP+/NADPH ratio is kept very low.[49]
Although it is important in catabolism, NADH is also used in anabolic reactions, such as gluconeogenesis.[50] This need for NADH in anabolism poses a problem for prokaryotes growing on nutrients that release only a small amount of energy. For example, nitrifying bacteria such as Nitrobacter oxidize nitrite to nitrate, which releases sufficient energy to pump protons and generate ATP, but not enough to produce NADH directly.[51] As NADH is still needed for anabolic reactions, these bacteria use a nitrite oxidoreductase to produce enough proton-motive force to run part of the electron transport chain in reverse, generating NADH.[52]
Non-redox roles
The coenzyme NAD+ is also consumed in ADP-ribose transfer reactions. For example, enzymes called ADP-ribosyltransferases add the ADP-ribose moiety of this molecule to proteins, in a posttranslational modification called ADP-ribosylation.[53] ADP-ribosylation involves either the addition of a single ADP-ribose moiety, in mono-ADP-ribosylation, or the transferral of ADP-ribose to proteins in long branched chains, which is called poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation.[54] Mono-ADP-ribosylation was first identified as the mechanism of a group of bacterial toxins, notably cholera toxin, but it is also involved in normal cell signaling.[55][56] Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is carried out by the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases.[54][57] The poly(ADP-ribose) structure is involved in the regulation of several cellular events and is most important in the cell nucleus, in processes such as DNA repair and telomere maintenance.[57] In addition to these functions within the cell, a group of extracellular ADP-ribosyltransferases has recently been discovered, but their functions remain obscure.[58]
NAD+ may also be added onto cellular RNA as a 5'-terminal modification.[59]

Another function of this coenzyme in cell signaling is as a precursor of cyclic ADP-ribose, which is produced from NAD+ by ADP-ribosyl cyclases, as part of a second messenger system.[60] This molecule acts in calcium signaling by releasing calcium from intracellular stores.[61] It does this by binding to and opening a class of calcium channels called ryanodine receptors, which are located in the membranes of organelles, such as the endoplasmic reticulum.[62]
NAD+ is also consumed by sirtuins, which are NAD-dependent deacetylases, such as Sir2.[63] These enzymes act by transferring an acetyl group from their substrate protein to the ADP-ribose moiety of NAD+; this cleaves the coenzyme and releases nicotinamide and O-acetyl-ADP-ribose. The sirtuins mainly seem to be involved in regulating transcription through deacetylating histones and altering nucleosome structure.[64] However, non-histone proteins can be deacetylated by sirtuins as well. These activities of sirtuins are particularly interesting because of their importance in the regulation of aging.[65]
Other NAD-dependent enzymes include bacterial DNA ligases, which join two DNA ends by using NAD+ as a substrate to donate an adenosine monophosphate (AMP) moiety to the 5' phosphate of one DNA end. This intermediate is then attacked by the 3' hydroxyl group of the other DNA end, forming a new phosphodiester bond.[66] This contrasts with eukaryotic DNA ligases, which use ATP to form the DNA-AMP intermediate.[67]
Extracellular actions of NAD+
In recent years, NAD+ has also been recognized as an extracellular signaling molecule involved in cell-to-cell communication.[36][68][69] NAD+ is released from neurons in blood vessels,[35] urinary bladder,[35][70] large intestine,[71][72] from neurosecretory cells,[73] and from brain synaptosomes,[74] and is proposed to be a novel neurotransmitter that transmits information from nerves to effector cells in smooth muscle organs.[71][72] Further studies are needed to determine the underlying mechanisms of its extracellular actions and their importance for human health and diseases.
Research
The enzymes that make and use NAD+ and NADH are important in both pharmacology and the research into future treatments for disease.[75] Drug design and drug development exploits NAD+ in three ways: as a direct target of drugs, by designing enzyme inhibitors or activators based on its structure that change the activity of NAD-dependent enzymes, and by trying to inhibit NAD+ biosynthesis.[76]
It has been studied for its potential use in the therapy of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.[2] A placebo-controlled clinical trial in people with Parkinson's failed to show any effect.[77]
NAD+ is also a direct target of the drug isoniazid, which is used in the treatment of tuberculosis, an infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Isoniazid is a prodrug and once it has entered the bacteria, it is activated by a peroxidase enzyme, which oxidizes the compound into a free radical form.[78] This radical then reacts with NADH, to produce adducts that are very potent inhibitors of the enzymes enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductase,[79] and dihydrofolate reductase.[80]
Since a large number of oxidoreductases use NAD+ and NADH as substrates, and bind them using a highly conserved structural motif, the idea that inhibitors based on NAD+ could be specific to one enzyme is surprising.[81] However, this can be possible: for example, inhibitors based on the compounds mycophenolic acid and tiazofurin inhibit IMP dehydrogenase at the NAD+ binding site. Because of the importance of this enzyme in purine metabolism, these compounds may be useful as anti-cancer, anti-viral, or immunosuppressive drugs.[81][82] Other drugs are not enzyme inhibitors, but instead activate enzymes involved in NAD+ metabolism. Sirtuins are a particularly interesting target for such drugs, since activation of these NAD-dependent deacetylases extends lifespan in some animal models.[83] Compounds such as resveratrol increase the activity of these enzymes, which may be important in their ability to delay aging in both vertebrate,[84] and invertebrate model organisms.[85][86] In one experiment, mice given NAD for one week had improved nuclear-mitochrondrial communication.[87]
Because of the differences in the metabolic pathways of NAD+ biosynthesis between organisms, such as between bacteria and humans, this area of metabolism is a promising area for the development of new antibiotics.[88][89] For example, the enzyme nicotinamidase, which converts nicotinamide to nicotinic acid, is a target for drug design, as this enzyme is absent in humans but present in yeast and bacteria.[30]
In bacteriology, NAD, sometimes referred to factor V, is used a supplement to culture media for some fastidious bacteria.[90]
History

The coenzyme NAD+ was first discovered by the British biochemists Arthur Harden and William John Young in 1906.[91] They noticed that adding boiled and filtered yeast extract greatly accelerated alcoholic fermentation in unboiled yeast extracts. They called the unidentified factor responsible for this effect a coferment. Through a long and difficult purification from yeast extracts, this heat-stable factor was identified as a nucleotide sugar phosphate by Hans von Euler-Chelpin.[92] In 1936, the German scientist Otto Heinrich Warburg showed the function of the nucleotide coenzyme in hydride transfer and identified the nicotinamide portion as the site of redox reactions.[93]
Vitamin precursors of NAD+ were first identified in 1938, when Conrad Elvehjem showed that liver has an "anti-black tongue" activity in the form of nicotinamide.[94] Then, in 1939, he provided the first strong evidence that niacin is used to synthesize NAD+.[95] In the early 1940s, Arthur Kornberg was the first to detect an enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway.[96] In 1949, the American biochemists Morris Friedkin and Albert L. Lehninger proved that NADH linked metabolic pathways such as the citric acid cycle with the synthesis of ATP in oxidative phosphorylation.[97] In 1958, Jack Preiss and Philip Handler discovered the intermediates and enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of NAD+;[98][99] salvage synthesis from nicotinic acid is termed the Preiss-Handler pathway. In 2004, Charles Brenner and co-workers uncovered the nicotinamide riboside kinase pathway to NAD+.[100]
The non-redox roles of NAD(P) were discovered later.[1] The first to be identified was the use of NAD+ as the ADP-ribose donor in ADP-ribosylation reactions, observed in the early 1960s.[101] Studies in the 1980s and 1990s revealed the activities of NAD+ and NADP+ metabolites in cell signaling– such as the action of cyclic ADP-ribose, which was discovered in 1987.[102] The metabolism of NAD+ remained an area of intense research into the 21st century, with interest heightened after the discovery of the NAD+-dependent protein deacetylases called sirtuins in 2000, by Shin-ichiro Imai and coworkers.[103]
See also
Enzyme catalysis
List of oxidoreductases

Further reading
Function

History
, A history of early enzymology.
, a textbook from the 19th century.

 in the Protein Data Bank
 (Flash Required)
 and  Chemical data sheet from Sigma-Aldrich
,  and  at the MetaCyc database
 at the SWISS-PROT database

What does Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide do for the cell?