There is no Frigate like a Book

Emily Dickinson is an essential figure in American literature. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830, Dickinson rarely left her childhood home. Despite this reclusion and lack of publications during her lifetime, Dickinson’s poetry is renowned for its unique poetic voice. Many of her works, including “There is no Frigate like a Book,” fit into a tradition of religious hymns and psalms. Unlike many American contemporaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Walt Whitman, who develop a romantic understanding of the natural world, Dickinson’s works often look inward.

“There is no Frigate like a Book” is a strong example of how Dickinson’s poetry looks inward. Full of idiosyncratic connections, the poem explores how books help their reader travel with their own imagination. The poem, unpublished and untitled at her death in 1886, is identified by its first line. Thomas H. Johnson has assigned the poem the number 1263 in his 1955 edition, and R. W. Franklin has assigned the poem the number 1286. Each editor has numbered the poems in what they judge to be chronological order.

Poet Biography

Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. As a young girl, Dickinson attended Amherst Academy before studying at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley between 1846 and 1847.