There is a story on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education today about
Emily Dickinson MSS at Houghton Library: Wild Nights!—Wild Nights! Autograph manuscript, in fascicle 11, ca. 1861. MS Am 1118.3 (38b). Gift, Gilbert H. Montague, 1950.© President and Fellows of Harvard College.
the “acrimony” between Harvard and Amherst College which is disrupting efforts to create a comprehensive open access on-line archive for the manuscript papers of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson. For over a century, efforts to aggregate these papers have been stymied by the fruits of a bitter rivalry between Susan Dickinson, the wife of Emily’s brother, Austin Dickinson, and Mabel Todd, who was the first editor of the poems, and who had a long doubly adulterous love affair with Austin. Mabel’s stash of papers wound up at Amherst College while Susan’s heirs sent their holdings to Harvard, where it is considered the jewel in the crown of Harvard’s 19th century manuscript collection at Houghton Library. Now that Houghton is preparing to launch the online archive and Amherst, which is listed as one among several collaborators, feels slighted, accusing Harvard of appropriating their assets without sharing the design decisions or access to their own collection. What can we learn from this? Continue reading
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Amazon has just announced that it will 
Janet H. Murray 