The provenance of this letter, composed around 1885 (THJ), is unclear. In Letters (1958), Thomas H. Johnson notes: "Sara Colton was a friend of Martha Dickinson Bianchi. . . . [She] did not know and never saw ED. . . . The tone of this [letter], the signature, the concern with rhetorical effect, make one seriously doubt that it was in fact sent to Sara Colton. Nor was it sent to Susan Dickinson, for ED never signed notes to Sue thus. Whoever received it perhaps presented it to Sara Colton as a memento" (L 1011 n). The manuscript was later affixed to the front pastedown of a copy of the second volume of Letters of Emily Dickinson (1894). A small return address label reading "From | Mrs. Arthur L. Gillett | 16 North Marshall St. | Hartford, Conn." appears in the top left corner of the first leaf. For additional information on Sara Philips Colton Gillett, see Thomas H. Johnson, Letters (1958), Appendix 1.

This text of this letter is incorporated, altered, into a much longer letter sent to T. W. Higginson in August 1885; see BPL Higg 116. Although the compositional order of the two letters is not clear, it seems likely that Dickinson drew on the letter to Gillett (?), as well as on two fragments (see below), when writing to Higginson. For related fragments, see A 802 and A 809. A 809, by itself an autonomous, extrageneric fragment, is also a variant rough-copy draft of A 802. Both A 809 and A 802 may be drafts of the letter to Gillett (?), or, independent texts, metamorphosed into a letter when the occasion called for it.