Being one of three non-English majors on this trip, I did not truly realize the significance of our visit to Houghton Library, which houses Harvard’s rare book collection, until after we left the building. The librarian, Susan Halpert, took us to the Emily Dickinson room where we saw original manuscripts of Dickinson’s poetry. Unbound from their fascicles, we could see the holes along the edges of the paper where thread once was. Only existing in her first draft, the poetry remains unfinished, a fact that could be seen through the elaborate system of symbols denoting a variant to the original word. After seeing the manuscripts, we entered a smaller room, which housed the very bureau where Emily’s sister, Lavinia, found her sister’s poetry after her death. This room also contained needlework Emily sewed, original portraits of the Dickinson children and the books Emily read.

As if this were not enough to please our group of literary scholars, we were then allowed to view an array of original manuscripts by other authors we have been studying. We saw journals of Melville, Thoreau and Emerson and the last draft of Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. These weren’t photocopies, reproductions, or second editions. We were able to see and even touch original manuscripts of these authors. Halpert, realizing our astonishment, reassured us that “these authors were real, flesh and blood.” It wasn’t as though I didn’t believe these words. I understood that the authors once lived, but after seeing their journals, their actual penmanship, I did feel as though I had some connection with the great American authors.