Final answer:
Thomas Johnson did not discover Emily Dickinson's poems; her sister Lavinia found them after Emily's death in 1886. Johnson is known for editing and publishing her works in 1955. Dickinson is lauded for her lyrical mastery and unorthodox writing style.
Step-by-step explanation:
Thomas Johnson did not discover Emily Dickinson's original poems; rather, it was her sister Lavinia Dickinson who found the poems shortly after Emily's death in 1886. Lavinia came across hundreds of poems in her sister's bedroom, which were written on scraps of paper and bound into small packets. Emily Dickinson was a fiercely private poet, and it wasn't until after her passing that the breadth of her work began to emerge publicly. Thomas H. Johnson, an editor and scholar, later came to be known for his 1955 publication, the three-volume The Poems of Emily Dickinson, which was the first attempt to comprehensively collect and edit Dickinson's work.
Emily Dickinson's writing style was characterized by her use of unconventional punctuation and capitalization, thematic elements of nature and immortality, and a mastery of the lyric form. Although she had a few poems published during her life, Dickinson's complete works only gained widespread attention posthumously. Scholarly work like Johnson's played a substantial role in bringing her work to light and helping it to achieve the canonical status it holds today in American literature.