Emily Dickinson's hidden herbarium

In the panorama of 19th-century American poetry, Emily Dickinson occupies a unique and fascinating place.

With over 2,000 poems written in her lifetime, she is considered one of the most intense and original voices in modern literature. Her verses—often brief and fragmentary—reveal a profound inner world, suspended between solitude, eternity, and beauty.

Glamora walcovering Diary Inspiration The secret herbarium

Yet beyond the poet, there was another side to Dickinson, lesser-known: that of a passionate botanist.

In the quiet of her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, she spent time collecting, pressing, and cataloging the plants and flowers from her garden and the surrounding countryside. The result was a precious herbarium of more than 400 specimens, still preserved today in its original form. Each leaf and petal, carefully glued to numbered pages, becomes a poetic gesture—a silent testimony to her gaze upon the world.

It’s not hard to find in this botanical labor the same qualities that animate her writing: sharp observation, sensitivity to the invisible, and a tendency toward wonder.

Dickinson’s flowers are never merely decorative; in her poetry, they become symbols of impermanence, instruments of contemplation, secrets entrusted to nature.

This deep affinity between word and plant inspired one of the thematic strands of Creative Collection Chapter XV, the latest chapter of the Glamora collection.

The theme focuses on natural elements interpreted through a delicate, refined, and quietly bold aesthetic—much like Dickinson’s work. Textures, colors, and subjects evoke a dialogue with botany, offering the poetry of nature in a contemporary and sophisticated visual form.

Through this tribute to the poet and her secret herbarium, Glamora presents a vision of the botanical world not as simple decoration, but as a trace of an intimate narrative, where each natural element becomes part of a visual story rich in beauty and meaning.