Emily Dickinson remained largely unacknowledged until the publication of her Complete Poems in 1955. In this book, published in the centenary year of Dickinson's death, McNeil brilliantly assesses the grounds for and the meaning of her belated recognition. She argues that not only was Dickinson's reclusiveness a strategy for asking forbidden questions, but the absence of a readership during her lifetime gave her poetry its unique freedom and stature. In an era when women were encouraged to write badly or sentimentally, Dickinson's isolation permitted her to decide for herself what poetry could be about and what kind of language it could use. In this study of her life and work, Helen McNeil both celebrates her individuality and shows how the English poetic tradition is altered by an understanding of Dickinson's accomplishments. ISBN 0-394-74766-6 (pbk.): $7.95.