From Booklist

The Critical Companion series examines the lives and works of the writers most studied by high-school and college students. The expertly written and accessible volume on Dickinson follows a similar format: introduction; biography; critique of selected works; A-Z dictionary of related people, places, and other topics; appendixes; and index. From nearly 1,800 Dickinson poems, Leiter has selected for analysis some 150 that include “all the poems that students commonly encounter today,” making sure as well that the selection is representative of Dickinson’s scope–“including poems on all her major concerns, in all her different voices, from all time periods.” Leiter quotes from the poems, but the reader is best served by having at hand the editions of Dickinson’s poems edited by Thomas H. Johnson or, more recently, R. W. Franklin. Leiter presents the poems in alphabetical order by first lines (which have come to substitute for titles), adding also the date and the poem numbers as supplied by Johnson and Franklin. She lets the critics speak for themselves, recognizing that the enigmatic poems rarely have a definitive interpretation. “Related Persons, Places, and Ideas” contains dozens of meaty entries, including Amherst College; Capitalization; Higginson, Thomas Wentworth; Letters; Mount Holyoke Female Seminary; and Todd, Mabel Loomis. Appendixes include a chronology, a bibliography of Dickinson’s works, and a partially annotated bibliography of secondary sources. Craig Bunch
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Review

Sharon Leiter has given us an enthrallingly readable new reference book on Emily Dickinson, her poetry and letters, her family members and friends, and her social and cultural backgrounds. Although Facts on File, Inc….intends books in its “Critical Companion” series chiefly for high school and college students…this substantial volume should become a treasured resource for teachers at all levels, indeed for anyone who delights in Emily Dickinson’s poems. While students are likely to zero in on entries for specific poems and be led by Leiter’s helpful cross-referencing to complementary information, readers already acquainted with the scholarly conversation on Dickinson’s work will savor Gregory Orr’s foreward and the author’s introduction, admire the care with which Leiter develops her knowledgeable and perceptive biographical sketch of Dickinson, and applaud the years of painstaking research lovingly recapitulated in her acknowledgements.

Extended analyses of more than 150 individual poems (what Leiter identifies as “the heart of the book[iv])appear in “Part II (Poems A-Z).” She includes poems most often anthologized or subjected to critical analysis, many of those flagged by Charles Anderson as Dickinson’s greatest, and others that appear as happy rprises. …Fear not that Leiter is providing lazy or intimidated students with all-purpose explications that will be plagiarized; what she offers instead are richly contextualized, open-minded, and actively engaged readings that reflect Leiter’s interpretive gifts as poet and scholar….It is this bountiful section of illuminating poem analyses that will make this book important to Dickinson scholar-teachers as well as to the audience Leiter’s publisher intents.At present, we have no such compendium of readings…Leiter has blessed us and our students with a work of exceptional amplitude and understanding. –The Emily Dickinson Journal, Spring 2009, by Jane Eberwein