Review of “I Often Passed the Village” (1858)

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Emily Dickinson (writer).

Read in 2021.

An example of too much encrypted autobiography: The village is the local graveyard in Amherst, which Dickinson would literally pass “going home from school”. Here she romanticizes dying, addressing a fantasy to her sister-in-law Susan, whose name is encrypted with a nickname as “Dollie”.

References here: “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” (1862/1863).

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