Joggling the mind

Daguerreotype taken at what became Mount Holyoke College in December 1846 or early 1847; the only authenticated portrait of Dickinson after childhood

“I have a brother and sister — my mother does not care for thought — and a father, too busy with his beliefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.”

— Poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) in an April 15, 1862 letter to Thomas Wentworth Dickinson