A 842: etext transcription
- Physical Description
- Manuscript: A 842
- Date: [last decade (THJ)]
- Status: text 1: address, remains; text 2: fragment, extrageneric
- Formula: 1 fragment
- Paper: envelope
- Dimensions: 116 x 81 mm; reverse: 81 x 116 mm
- Edges: left: scissored; bottom: torn; reverse: top: scissored; right: torn
- Media: pencil
- Hand: fair
- Collection
- Amherst College Library
- Transmission History
- MSS from LND to MLT, 1891?
- Publication History
- A 842, text 1: Letters (1958), PF 21 n; OF (1995), A 842v, in facsimile, with unredacted transcription A 842, text 2: Letters (1931), xxiv; Rev (1954), 20; Letters (1958), PF 21; OF (1995), A 842, in facsimile, with unredacted transcription
- Commentary
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This is one of a number of late manuscripts in which opposite sides of the paper constitute separate textual spaces. The brief fragment on the inside of the envelope was composed after the envelope was cut apart; the text on the torn face of the envelope—a partial address to Otis P. Lord—may have been preserved only because Dickinson used the reverse side to jot down the rough-copy fragment. Although unlikely, it is possible that Dickinson associated Lord with secrecy, "seals," and that a more than material relation exists between the texts. Dickinson's final intentions toward the fragment remain unknown. It may have been destined for incorporation into a poem, a letter, or a longer pensée; it may be an experiment in aphoristic form. After jotting down the fragment, Dickinson wrote "- which," probably a variant for "that -," sideways along the right edge of the envelope.
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- Tags
- Text was composed between c.1870 and c.1886
- Document was discovered among Dickinson's papers, unbound
- Envelope
- Document has been scissored; text has been lost beyond the cuts
- Composed by Dickinson in pencil
- Composed by Dickinson in a fair-copy hand
- Composed by Dickinson in a rough-copy hand
- Dickinson's writing appears on both sides of the paper/leaf
- Dickinson's writing appears sideways along the left and/or right edges of the paper
- Dickinson rotated the paper during the course of the composition of a discrete text
- Text contains additions or variants
- Amherst College Library, Special Collections
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