New Directions Press will release the first full color facsimile edition of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts entitled The Gorgeous Nothings. The deluxe edition presents her experimental, late writings exactly as she wrote them, on scraps of envelopes. The book presents all fifty-two of the envelope writings in life-size, full color, front and back format. An accompanying transcription is also provided. The press hopes, with this never before presented format, to give readers more than a glimpse into Dickinson’s process.

The project, envisioned by the artist Jen Bervin, was made possible by Dickinson scholar Marta L. Werner’s extensive research, with contributions by poet Susan Howe as well. The final product offers a fresh understanding and greater appreciation of Emily Dickinson’s genius. The Gorgeous Nothings will be released on October 29, 2013.

As many lovers of literature already know, some of the world’s best writers left us poems and songs on envelopes, napkins, and scraps of paper: from the first draft of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” to work by Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, Bob Dylan, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Link: http://ndbooks.com/book/the-gorgeous-nothings

Cover image from New Directions Press