Tuesday, February 17, 2004

About a date with Emily Dickinson on Ebay

I've been ebaying as of late, a new preoccupation. One always hopes for a wicked good bargain. What first editions are out there that someone doesn't appreciate and no one has stumbled on? It's a perfect nexus of ignorance and non-cognizance. Here's a story I found through a link from Arts and Letters Daily on such a perfect find. It appears the author of the piece has purchased an hitherto unknown photograph of Emily. That would make it the second known photo of the Belle of Amherst. (And he sniped it.) MQ:

A second photograph of Dickinson has long been the Holy Grail of artifacts for scholars in my field, but it certainly was not on my mind the night that I first saw the image on eBay. I was browsing through the descriptions of albumen photographs, in search of images of stringed instrument players and of twins, two categories in which I collect. When I saw "Vintage Emily Dickinson Albumen Photo," I laughed: another unenlightened dealer who didn’t realize that there were no albumen photos of the poet.

Link: How I Met and Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: An Adventure on eBay by Philip F. Gura on Common-Place

No comments: