Lavinia Norcross Dickinson

Lavinia Norcross Dickinson (February 28, 1833 – August 31, 1899) was the younger sister of American poet Emily Dickinson.

Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
The Dickinson children (Lavinia on the right), ca. 1840. From the Dickinson Room at Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Born	February 28, 1833 Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	August 31, 1899(1899-08-31) (aged 66) Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.

Lavinia "Vinnie" Dickinson was instrumental in achieving the posthumous publication of her sister's poems after having discovered the forty-odd manuscripts in which Emily had collected her work. Despite promising her sister that she would destroy all correspondence and personal papers, Vinnie sought to have her sister's poetry edited and published by two of Emily's personal correspondents, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Four years after Emily Dickinson's death, in 1890, Poems was published by Roberts Brothers, Boston.[1] By the end of 1892, it had already been through eleven editions.

Vinnie was the youngest of the Dickinson siblings born to Edward Dickinson and his wife Emily Norcross in Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married and remained at the Dickinson Homestead until her death.

Inspiration

• A 2019 series from Apple TV+, Dickinson, features Anna Baryshnikov as Dickinson in a comedic interpretation equivalent.

Notes

1. Sewall, p. xxviii

References

• Sewall, Richard B.. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 0-674-53080-2.

Further reading

• Gordon, Lyndall (2010). Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-19019-7.
• Horan, Elizabeth (1996). "To Market: The Dickinson Copyright Wars". The Emily Dickinson Journal. 5 (1): 88–120. doi:10.1353/edj.0.0117. ISSN 1096-858X.
• "Lavinia Norcross Dickinson (1833-1899), sister". Emily Dickinson Museum. Archived from the original on 15 April 2018.