Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is it! If you want only one book presenting all of Emily Dickinson's poems, this is the book for you. I acquired the Johnson one-volume edition (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson) on March 3, 1989, and that was my only Dickinson until I got Shurr's "New Poems" (New Poems of Emily Dickinson) on July 12, 1994. Eventually, I acquired the Franklin one-volume edition (The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (Belknap)) on December 13, 2010. Finally, I got this Miller edition on July 21, 2016. The Johnson and Miller editions are the only complete editions that I've read straight through. I spent nine weeks this summer (2016) reading the Miller edition, and I enjoyed every page. The chief difference between Franklin's and Johnson's is the order of the poems: Franklin concluded that Johnson had dated many of the poems wrongly; since each edition presents the poems in roughly chronological order according to the editor's best judgement, the order of poems in Franklin's book differs markedly from that of Johnson's. Miller's differs even more dramatically in the order of the poems: Miller generally accepts Franklin's dating of the poems, but presents them in five sections based on how Emily "preserved them". The first section presents the poems that Emily herself had assembled into little booklets called fascicles; the second section presents poems that Emily herself had saved on "unbound sheets" joined together with a brass fastener (though we don't know whether Emily herself did the fastening); the third section presents "loose poems" that Emily had kept in her possession; the fourth section presents "poems transcribed by others" for which no manuscript in Emily's hand has been found; finally, the fifth and last section presents "poems not retained" by the poet herself but given to others. The first three sections are by far the longest, and a majority of the poems appear in the first two sections. One wouldn't go far wrong getting any of the three complete editions -- Johnson, Franklin, or Miller. I think Miller's is best, though, in three respects. First, simply because most of the poems are presented by Miller in fairly small groups (sheets, leaves) whereas the only division of poems in Johnson's and Franklin's books are by year, which makes for a run-on effect after reading for a while. Second, Miller also presents variant readings -- alternative lines and words written by the poet herself on the manuscript pages. (Thus, we get the most significant aspects of a "variorum" edition in a reader's edition.) Third, Miller footnotes to whom (if anyone) the poet shared each poem and provides some helpful annotation about possible sources, references, and allusions, in endnotes. Miller's index of first lines provides the Johnson and Franklin numbers for cross-referencing those older complete editions; alas, though, she provides no numbering system for the poems in her own edition, a deliberate choice that I think was imprudent. (I myself have resorted to referring to the poems in Miller's edition by page and poem number. For instance, one of my favorites, "The Life we have is very great", is Johnson # 1162, Franklin # 1178, and Miller "number" 707.3.) A magnificent work of scholarship, and a very enjoyable read. This is it! P.S. This is only the fourth review of this book here: I don't provide many reviews, and this is the first time I've been one of the earliest reviewers.