Seven top writers' graves

Peter Stanford is a writer, biographer, journalist and broadcaster. His new book is How To Read a Graveyard: Journeys in the Company of the Dead.

Seven of his top ten graves are for persons known primarily for their writing. One writer's grave on the list:

Emily Dickinson
Amherst, Massachusetts

Dickinson arguably wrote more about death and immortality than any other poet. She even left strict instructions as to the manner of her burial, having lived for many years in her family home as a virtual recluse. She wanted her coffin, she said, to be carried through a field of buttercups. But on her simple stone there is no stanza from her works, just the words “Called Back”, reflecting her strong Christian faith. The vast majority of her works may not have been published – or indeed found – until after her death in 1886 but the less-is-more approach to this poet’s grave has contributed to it becoming a place of pilgrimage

Read about another grave on the list.

"Because I could not stop for death" by Emily Dickinson is one of Jay Parini's ten best American poems. Dickinson's "I Watched the Moon Around the House" is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of moon poetry. She is one of Ruth Padel's top ten women poets.

--Marshal Zeringue