[These letters] present us with as inward a view of one of God’s rarer creatures as we are likely to be given… The letters themselves are as no others. The briefest line can be a mystery (and, when fathomed, a communion), the formal note a sign… If [these letters] are put alongside those of…Coleridge and Keats, they will present the most striking contrast in a poet’s reactions and sensibilities. But they will stand there unashamed.

• Publisher's Note Introduction PART I: 1842-1846 "...the Hens lay finely..." PART II: 1847-1848 "I am really at Mt Holyoke..." PART III: 1849-1850 "Amherst is alive with fun this winter..." PART IV: 1851-1854 "...we do not have much poetry, father having made up his mind that its pretty much all real life." PART V: 1855-1857 "To live, and die, and mount again in triumphant body... is no schoolboy's theme!" PART VI: 1858-1861 "Much has occurred...so much that I stagger as I write, in its sharp remembrance." PART VII: 1862-1865 "Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that- My Business is Circumference." PART VIII: 1866-1869 "A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend." PART IX: 1870-1874 "I find ecstasy in living the mere sense of living is joy enough." PART X: 1875-1879 "Nature is a Haunted House but Art - a House that tries to be haunted." PART XI: 1880-1883 "I hesitate which word to take, as I can take but few and each must be the chiefest..." PART XII: 1884-1886 "...a Letter is a joy of Earth it is denied the Gods." Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Recipients of Letters and of Persons Mentioned in Them Index