This fair-copy poem was enclosed in a letter (BPL Higg 83; J L 449) sent to T. W. Higginson around 1876 (THJ, RWF). Dickinson enclosed four other poems with the letter: "The Heart | is the | Capital of | the Mind"; "The Mind | lives on the | Heart"; "The Rat | is the | concisest | Tenant"; and "'Faithful to | the end' | amended." For an initial rough-copy draft of "The last | of Summer," see A 404 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1876 [THJ]); for a re-working of the rough-copy draft's opening lines, see A 405 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1876 [THJ]); for a fair-copy trial beginning, see A 94-13 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1876 [THJ]); and for a complete fair-copy draft, see H 380 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1876 [THJ]). For a related fragment, see A 295 / 296 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1876 or last decade [THJ]). In Poems (1998), R. W. Franklin hypothesizes that A 296 was composed after A 405, since it offers an alternate reading for the poem's second line. The definitive compositional history of the textual constellation, however, remains open to speculation.