In 1890, four years after Emily Dickinson's death, a selection of her poems was published in Boston, Massachusetts, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The collection, titled 'Poems by Emily Dickinson,' introduced her unconventional verse to a wider public and established her as one of America's greatest poets. Though Dickinson had written during the Civil War era, her work was largely unknown until this posthumous publication.

The publication of Dickinson's poems revolutionized American poetry, introducing a radical new voice characterized by intense compression, slant rhyme, and metaphysical wit. Though her poems rarely engaged directly with the Civil War, they reflected the existential and spiritual turmoil of the era. Dickinson's work influenced generations of poets, from the Modernists to the present, and her posthumous success demonstrated the power of poetry to transcend its historical moment. The 1890 edition remains a foundational text in American literature.