This is the genuine opening of Dickinson’s poem — catalogued J254 (Johnson) / Fr314 (Franklin) — copied into her hand-sewn Fascicle 13 around 1861 and first printed in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series in 1891. Her own text reads “Hope” in quotation marks and joins the two lines with a dash, not a hyphen.
“Hope is the thing with feathers - that perches in the soul” is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — Emily Dickinson, poem J254/Fr314 (c.1861), first published in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series (1891)
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In context
Evoking the world of Emily Dickinson — American poet, Amherst, Massachusetts. Theme: "Hope is the thing with feathers - that perches in the soul". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The poem & its first printing
Work
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
Catalogue
J254 (Johnson 1955) · Fr314 (Franklin 1998)
Written
c. 1861, in Fascicle 13 (manuscript, Houghton Library)
First published
1891, Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series (Roberts Brothers, Boston)
“Hope” is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — And sings the tune without the words — And never stops — at all —
Dickinson’s own wording keeps “Hope” inside quotation marks and uses her signature dashes; the widely shared “Hope is the thing with feathers - that perches in the soul” drops the quotes and flattens the dash to a hyphen.
The poem, its Johnson (J254) and Franklin (Fr314) numbers, its c. 1861 composition in Fascicle 13 and its 1891 first printing are documented at Wikipedia.
Emily Dickinson died in 1886 and this poem was first published in 1891 — well before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff — so the text is firmly in the public domain in the United States.
Fact-check
It’s really hers — but the wording gets tidied up
Unusually for a famous quotation, the attribution here is correct: these are Dickinson’s own words. What travels online is a lightly altered rendering.
✕
WordingEmily Dickinson mis-rendered
The popular form “Hope is the thing with feathers - that perches in the soul” drops the quotation marks Dickinson placed around “Hope” and replaces her line-ending dash with a hyphen; her text reads “Hope” is the thing with feathers — / That perches in the soul —, as shown at the Poetry Foundation.
✓The thought and the words are genuinely Dickinson’s — only her punctuation gets lost in transit, per the poem’s publication record.
Context
Why it endures
Written around 1861, the poem casts hope as a small bird that “perches in the soul” and sings on regardless of the storm, never asking anything in return. Its plain ballad meter and gentle metaphor have made it one of the most quoted consolations in English.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers — / That perches in the soul —
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet who lived much of her life in near-seclusion in Amherst, Massachusetts, and published almost nothing while alive. After her death her sister found some 1,800 poems, many stitched into hand-sewn booklets called fascicles. Her compressed lines, slant rhyme and idiosyncratic dashes — on display in this poem — made her, posthumously, one of the central figures of American poetry.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” (J254 / Fr314, c. 1861), in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series, ed. T. W. Higginson and M. L. Todd (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891).
MLA (9th ed.)
Dickinson, Emily. “‘Hope’ Is the Thing with Feathers.” Poems by Emily Dickinson, Second Series, edited by T. W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, Roberts Brothers, 1891.
APA (7th ed.)
Dickinson, E. (1891). ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers. In T. W. Higginson & M. L. Todd (Eds.), Poems by Emily Dickinson, second series. Roberts Brothers.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Hope is the thing with feathers - that perches in the soul’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-that-perches-in-the-soul