Poets' And Writers' Spelling Mistakes

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 Vivian Cook

A selection of spelling mistakes (and a few punctuation mistakes) by some famous poets, taken mostly from the manuscripts of their poems.

Emily Dickinson

words: extasy extatic boquet Febuary nescessity nescessary unannointed teazing bretheren independant boddice shily witheld
apostrophes: does’nt  did’nt   it’s solemn abbeys   it’s dripping feet

Ezra Pound

words: tarrif diarhoa damd supercedes indespensible sustinence devines (vb) assylum wierd assininities
apostrophes: cant dont isnt wouldnt thats wont

William Wordsworth

words: eughtrees questined craggs vullgar untill lillies pennyless impressd fellt receved anixious plungd th (the) whith (with) strage (strange)
apostrophes: your’s

John Milton

words: persues persuers cheife cheifly scituation raign (reign) beleive woomb Egipt eys (eyes) Iland waight
apostrophes: arm’s 

Virginia Woolf

words: pannelled, busyness (?), naiv (?)
apostrophes: cant, shant, wont, dont, wouldnt, isnt
that’s, you’re a woman of genius, I feel sure your worse
Prima Donna's, a childs highchair, a donkeys head, fathers state, the Fabians discourse

words: archiologist, condences, proffessional, ungry, mistyque, useing, Hawaia, loseing
apostrophes: didnt, dont, couldnt, in ones lifetime

words: dissilusion, seperate, disspoint, propoganda

words: proffesrshp, origonal, descreetly, immitation, peculearitys, beleive, salid, seperate, litteracy
apostrophes: 'till, Mathers letter

Season of Mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
The Vines with fruit that round the thatch eves run
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage trees
And fill all furuits with sweeness to the core
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazle shells
With a white kernel; to set budding more
And still more later flowers for the bees
Until they think wam days with never cease
For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells

Many of these are exactly the same mistakes as on today's web pages. On the other hand some of them may have been deliberate choices by the writers - Milton for example had strong views on spelling - or may have been a spelling variant at the time the poet was writing.