Lavinia Norcross Dickinson

Who was Lavinia Norcross Dickinson?

Lavinia Norcross Dickinson was the younger sister of famed American poet, Emily Dickinson.

Lavinia, "Vinnie", Dickinson 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. By the end of 1892, it had already been through eleven editions.

The youngest of the Dickinson siblings born to Edward Dickinson and his wife Emily Norcross in Amherst, Massachusetts, Vinnie never married and remained at the Homestead until her death.