I Died for Beauty

I Died for Beauty - fact Summary

First Printed 1890

This brief allegorical poem was first published in 1890 in Poems by Emily Dickinson, First Series. Its compact narrative—two dead speakers who claim to have died for "beauty" and "truth" and then recognize their kinship—reached readers through that influential collection. Knowing its place in the first major edition of Dickinson's work helps explain how the poem contributed to the emerging public image of her concise, paradox-driven meditations on abstract ideals. The 1890 publication helped fix the poem within the late-19th-century reception of her oeuvre.