During Dickinson\u2019s life in the 1800s, Long says, men and women were taught different penmanship styles. Men would learn to make broad strokes, while women were instructed to keep letters diminutive to match the way they were expected to be: petite, quiet, unassuming.<\/p>\n
Long\u2019s collection of more than a dozen mostly anonymous scrapbooks from that time \u2013 more precisely, penmanship fascicles, commonplace books, and friendship albums \u2013 offer example after example of handwriting from the time, much of it female script and, unfortunately, none of it from Dickinson.<\/p>\n
But the personalized books, which Long has donated to the UConn Library<\/a> and Archives & Special Collections<\/a>, are part of a 19th century practice Dickinson would have known about and in which she may very well have participated.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople would have passed these books around, in some cases carrying them from town to town, for others to write things in them – verses that were memorized, poetry you wrote, quotable quotes that were overheard. Sometimes you can find pressed flowers between the pages or even small sketches. Also, when people came to visit, they would sign the books, so they served as autograph books, too,\u201d Long explains.<\/p>\n Eventually, book publishers caught onto the practice and began to print blank books with leather covers, much like today\u2019s journals, maybe peppering in empty pages of music staffs or embossed frames screaming for creative attention.<\/p>\n But oftentimes, people handstitched together scraps of paper, a prized possession of the simplest kind.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder, Long contends, that Dickinson left behind such handsewn fascicles with hundreds of her poems in a dresser drawer when she died. Her means of publishing wasn\u2019t eccentric; simply a popular, deeply personal, method for the time.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSelf-publication in handwritten booklets was a much more common way of writing than had been originally thought. It\u2019s the mainstream way 19th century women were published,\u201d Long says. \u201cWhen you look at these books, you\u2019re seeing what people read and loved. This is the lived experience of poetry in people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Back then, he says, poetry was everywhere in society. It was published in the daily newspaper and sung during Sunday church services. Even today \u2013 as the country recognizes National Poetry Month in April \u2013 music playlists include songs replete with poetry, and social media posts are captioned with inspirational poetic snips.<\/p>\n Long says poetry is important, first, for pleasure, the simple joy of reading verse, and second, to commemorate the big, beautiful, and dramatic turning points in life \u2013 death, birth, marriage, graduation \u2013 if only in a greeting card.<\/p>\n \u201cOftentimes they\u2019re trite, silly, and sentimental,\u201d he says of greeting cards, \u201cbut the fact is we turn to poetry in life\u2019s intense moments. There is no more noble medium for expressing the mystery and intensity of our lives. It takes us out of the everyday. The lines of a poem speak to us in a way that a paragraph of prose would not.\u201d<\/p>\n Decades ago, Long happened upon the first commonplace book of his collection at an antiques show in Virginia Beach, the same one where much later he discovered a page from the famed Beauvais Missal.<\/a><\/p>\n He describes the initial find as a homemade anthology of verses assembled by someone who lived in Massachusetts. One poem is titled, \u201cFormation of a Lyceum,\u201d another is dedicated to someone called Little Willy. There\u2019s one written on the death of Miss Cogswell and another written on the death of someone named Ranny Harris.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was only a little Black girl, for whom the bell did toll,\u201d he reads of Ranny Harris, noting the historical importance of such a poem in antebellum New England.<\/p>\n \u201cTom has a way of filling the gaps in our collection,\u201d Melissa Batt, an archivist at the Archives, says of his donation. \u201cThese are wonderful documents of 19th century writing practices, but they also tell us about the networks of females who contributed to them, the friends, family, mentors, perhaps even lovers, with whom these women circulated.\u201d<\/p>\n In some of the books, the authors practiced their penmanship, Long says. They pressed in newspaper clippings of poems and other items. In one, someone pressed a clover and on the next page another sketched a flower.<\/p>\n![\"Poet](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Dickenson-240319c0024-300x200.jpg\")