When Emily Dickinson's poems began appearing in slim volumes during the 1890s, many readers viewed her as an avant-garde writer. Her innovations and transgressions in subject and style were the occasion for either censure or celebration. “'Alcohol' does not rhyme to 'pearl,'” sniffed one English reviewer, scowling at the first stanza of “I taste a liquor never brewed” - while implying that the intoxicating experiment did not go well with aesthetic, “pearly” permanence. “She reminds us,” he added, “of no sane or educated writer.” Alice James, the brilliant sister of William and Henry James, noted with patriotic delight that British critics were deaf to Dickinson's peculiar, and peculiarly American, excellence. “It is reassuring to hear the English pronouncement that Emily Dickinson is fifth-rate,” she reflected in January 1892, “they have such a capacity for missing quality; the robust evades them equally with the subtle.”