Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
Lavinia "Vinnie" Norcross Dickinson (February 28, 1833 – August 31, 1899) was the younger sister of American poet Emily Dickinson. Vinnie was the youngest of the Dickinson siblings born to Edward Dickinson and his wife Emily Norcross in Amherst, Massachusetts. She shared a name with her Aunt Lavinia.
Also recorded as Lavinia Dickinson
Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
Otis Allen Bullard · Houghton Library, Harvard University · Public domain
- Name
- Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
- Born
- February 28, 1833
- Birthplace
- Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
- Died
- 31 August 1899
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- poet · writer
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q6502735 · wikipedia · Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
In this article
Biography
Biography
On September 7, 1840, Vinnie and her sister Emily started attending school at Amherst Academy, a former boys' school that had opened to female students just two years earlier. Vinnie was instrumental in achieving the posthumous publication of her sister's poems after having discovered the forty-odd manuscripts in which Emily had collected her work. Despite promising her sister that she would destroy all correspondence and personal papers, Vinnie sought to have her sister's poetry edited and published by two of Emily's personal correspondents, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Four years after Emily Dickinson's death, in 1890, Poems was published by Roberts Brothers, Boston.
Lavinia Dickinson
Author Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily Dickinson
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Lavinia Norcross Dickinson • Born — February 28, 1833 • Birthplace — Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S. • Died — 31 August 1899 • Place of death — Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S. • Parents — Edward Dickinson Emily Norcross Dickinson • Relatives — William Austin Dickinson (brother) Emily Dickinson (sister)
In popular culture
In popular culture
• In Apple TV+'s 2019–2021 series Dickinson, Anna Baryshnikov plays Dickinson in a comedic interpretation. • In the 2016 film A Quiet Passion, Lavinia is played by Jennifer Ehle.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Lavinia Norcross Dickinson, revision 1360701878 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.An excerpt from an undated letter from Emily Dickinson to her younger sister, Lavinia. Digital Public Library of America.
- 2.Collection: Todd-Bingham picture collection Archives at Yale. archives.yale.edu.
- 3.Sewall, Richard B. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. . p. 324
- 4.Sewall, Richard B. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. . p. 337
- 5.Sewall, Richard B. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. . p. xxviii
- 6.Vega, Carolyn. The Networked Recluse: The Connected World of Emily Dickinson. Amherst College Press. 5–12. 2017. 978-1-943208-06-7.
- 7.Dickinson, Emily. Poems. Roberts Brothers. 1890.
- 8.Fielder, Sally. A not-so-ordinary 'Sister'. Buffalo News. June 17, 2007.
- 9.Lopez, Kristen. 'Dickinson': Anna Baryshnikov on the Intricacies of Physical Comedy and Imitating Demi Moore. IndieWire. May 26, 2021.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 3
- Gordon, Lyndall. Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. Penguin. 2010. 978-1-101-19019-7.
- Horan, Elizabeth. To Market: The Dickinson Copyright Wars. The Emily Dickinson Journal. 5. 1. 88–120. 1996. 1096-858X.
- Emily Dickinson Museum. Lavinia Norcross Dickinson (1833-1899), sister.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 26 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Lauro De BosisAuthor
- Laurynas IvinskisAuthor
- Lavie TidharAuthor
- Lavinia GreenlawAuthor
- Lavinia StoddardAuthor
- Lawrence BeyerlinckAuthor
- Lawrence BlockAuthor
- Lawrence Dundas, 1st Marquess of ZetlandAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Lavinia Norcross Dickinson?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.