Four years after the poet's death in 1886, her sister Lavinia pursued the publication of Dickenson's poetry, requesting help from a few confidants, until finally settling on associate of Amherst University, Mabel Loomis Todd. This volume did not contain all of Dickenson's poetry, and after a successful year in print, they published a second volume in 1891, and later a third volume in 1896. This was still not a comprehensive version of Dickenson's work as a legal disagreement estranged Loomis Todd from Lavinia Dickenson.
It was not until 1945, after several of Dickenson's descendants kept pushing for the project to be revived, that the collection 'Bolts of Melody' was published, releasing most of Dickenson's poems to the public. A complete compilation of all Dickenson's work was eventually edited together by Thomas H. Johnson and published in 1955.
Bingham, Millicent Todd. Ancestors’ Brocades: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1945.
Franklin, R. W. “Introduction.” In The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. R. W. Franklin. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.