Rebuilding the Dickinson’s Library
As Dickinson scholar Polly Longsworth once noted:
“Books were a source of pride, pleasure, discussion, and even competitiveness among family members. Few possessions meant so much.”
The Emily Dickinson Museum is inviting you to become a part of literary history. We have officially relaunched Replenishing the Shelves, a unique, participatory collections initiative that asks book lovers around the world to help track down and reunite the exact book editions that once filled the Dickinson household.
You might be wondering: where did all the original books go?
Books from the Homestead and The Evergreens libraries that had close association with the poet became the gifted property of Harvard University in 1950. The remainder of the libraries of both houses was transferred in the early 1990s to the John Hay Library at Brown University.
The Emily Dickinson Museum knows the exact titles, publishers, and publication years of the books the family owned because the originals are preserved within these prestigious institutional archives. This also means that the shelves at the Homestead in Amherst have some empty spaces.
The Museum’s goal is to find those exact matching editions and bring them back to the rooms where they were first read and cherished.
Incredible discoveries are happening in the most unexpected places.
Ashtyne Wallingsford from Portland, Texas is a self-described lifelong “book nerd,” Ashtyne has always been drawn to old classics, first editions, and books bearing personal inscriptions. Recently, she made a casual stop at a local garage sale and noticed a box of older books. Tucked inside were two copies of Saxe Holm’s Stories (first series) by Helen Hunt Jackson, published in 1886.
Intrigued by her find, Wallingsford began researching the author and publication year online. Her digital deep-dive led her straight to the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Replenishing the Shelves list, where she realized the book she had found might be something more than a personal treasure.
After double-checking the edition to ensure it was the correct year, she reached out to the Museum’s Collection Manager, Megan Ramsey. Through photographs, the Museum confirmed that this was indeed a specific edition they had been hunting for.
Though Wallingsford hadn’t originally intended to give the book away, the thought of returning it to its historic home changed everything. “Letting it be part of shared knowledge felt really important,” she said. “I feel grateful that I was able to provide this to the Museum and contribute to better understanding history.”
When Wallingsford later traveled to Amherst to visit the Museum, she got to do something most history buffs only dream of: walking into Emily Dickinson’s bedroom and personally placing the book on the shelf right next to the poet’s bed.
“Getting to place the book on the shelf in the bedroom felt crazy,” Wallingsford shared. “Knowing that something I donated is right there next to Dickinson’s bed… I’m speechless.”
Your Invitation to Replenish the Shelves
Stories like Wallingsford’s underscore the importance of this crowdsourced project: history is not only preserved by large institutions, but through the vital support of passionate individuals. By reuniting books in Dickinson’s home, the Museum continues to build a living, evolving collection.
The project originally launched in 2007 to honor Polly Longsworth, the first chair of the Museum’s Board of Governors. This exciting relaunch coincides with recent digital collections upgrades at the Museum and has received significant additional support through a generous gift from Charles and Polly Longsworth. Thanks to these new digital search tools, it is now easier than ever for the public to see exactly which titles are missing, how to identify the correct editions, and how to donate them.
The next time you are browsing a thrift shop, an estate sale, or even your own family’s attic, keep your eyes peeled. You might just find a treasure that belongs on Emily Dickinson’s bedside table.
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023) and two poetry collections, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from the University of Washington and is an associate professor at Western Washington University. Her work appears in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, POETRY, and McSweeney’s. A Pushcart Prize winner, she has received numerous fellowships and exhibits interdisciplinary art nationally.
Anastacia-Reneé (she/they) is a queer writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. She is the author of Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad), named a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023 and an American Library Association Notable Book of 2024, along with (v.), Forget It, and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere. A former Seattle Civic Poet, TEDx speaker, and radio host, she has received the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award and fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, and Ragdale.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of the forthcoming poetry book, NIGHT OWL (Mar. 2026), and two illustrated collections of essays, BITE BY BITE and WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote four previous award-winning poetry collections: OCEANIC, LUCKY FISH, AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO, and MIRACLE FRUIT. With the poet Ross Gay, she co-authored the chapbook LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review.
Amy Wright co-edited the Virginia volume of the Southern Poetry Anthology and is finalizing her fourth volume of poetry. She has also authored six chapbooks and a book of nonfiction, Paper Concert (Sarabande Books), which received a Nautilus Gold Award for Lyric Prose. Her work has also been recognized with two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of the full-length collection Girl in a Bear Suit (Elixir Press, 2024) and the e-chapbook Disambiguation (Salamander/Suffolk University, 2024). She’s the winner of the Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander, selected by Stephanie Burt. Recent work has appeared in or is coming soon from swamp pink, Villain Era, The Common, & On the Seawall. Originally from the Boston area, she now lives in Western Massachusetts with her family and serves as the Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.
Sara Eddy’s second full-length poetry collection, How to Wash a Rabbit, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She is also author of Ordinary Fissures (2024), and two chapbooks: Full Mouth (2020), and Tell the Bees (2019). Her poems have appeared in many online and print journals, including Threepenny Review, Raleigh Review, Sky Island, and Baltimore Review, among others. She is assistant director of the Jacobson Center for Writing at Smith College, and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a house built by Emily Dickinson’s cousin.
Okwudili Nebeolisa is the author of Terminal Maladies (Autumn House Press, 2024), winner of the 2023 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics Prize and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently studying fiction at the University of Minnesota. His work appears in POETRY, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and Threepenny Review, among others. He has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Granum Foundation.
Annie Wenstrup is Dena’ina poet and the author of The Museum of Unnatural Histories (Wesleyan University Press, 2025). Awarded the 2025 Whiting Award in Poetry, the tenth annual New England Review Award for Emerging Writers, and the Alaska Literary Award in 2023, Wenstrup is an inaugural Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow. She lives on the traditional territories of the lower Tanana Dene Peoples in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Esther Lin is an undocumented poet and the author of “Cold Thief Place” (Alice James Books, 2025), long-listed for the National Book Award, and “The Ghost Wife” (Poetry Society of America, 2018). A co-organizer of Undocupoets, Lin’s work has been supported by Cité Internationale, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Stanford University, the Poetry Society of America, among others. She lives in Seattle.
Jimin Seo was born in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to the US to join his family at the age of eight. He is the author of OSSIA, a winner of The Changes Book Prize judged by Louise Glück. His poems can be found in Action Fokus, The Canary, LitHub, Pleiades, mercury firs, and The Bronx Museum. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H. Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London, and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Open Pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.
Oak Morse lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MLIS from the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the recipient of the 2025 Larry Levis Post-Graduate Award and the 2024 A Public Space Writing Fellowship. Oak has received support from PEN America and fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine, and Clay, as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in POETRY, Callaloo, Electric Literature, Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Hobart, with work forthcoming in Rattle, among others. 
