When a luminous Julie Harris first starred in The Belle of Amherst, in 1976, she won the last of her five Tony Awards, the most ever won by a performer. Now, at 75, the indefatigable actress has reunited with the play’s original director, Charles Nelson Reilly, and its original producer, Don Gregory, for a 25th-anniversary tour of William Luce’s one-woman play about Emily Dickinson, the 19th-century Amherst recluse who launched a thousand (plus) verses. Harris, who in addition to her lustrous 50-year stage career played opposite James Dean in East of Eden and did a seven-year stint on TV’s Knots Land, is the rare theatrical legend who will deign to tour. But The Belle of Amherst will hit 15 cities in seven months, including a stop at Boston’s Shubert Theatre this week.

The lure of Dickinson, Harris says, is “the power of her poetry, and her originality, and her spirit, and her great humor. All of those things. Her independence. By that I mean, in her day, in the 1850s, religion was a very, very strong influence. And all of her family — mother, father, brother, sister — belonged to the Church. Emily somehow resisted. That strong Calvinist religion didn’t appeal to her, so she simply didn’t become a member of the Church. She said, however, that she always had by her bed the Bible and Shakespeare.”

Harris was involved with Emily Dickinson even before Luce — who so skillfully wove the poet’s verses and letters into the piece that it’s hard to know where Dickinson’s words leave off and his pick up — wrote The Belle of Amherst for her. “When I did a recording of her poems and letters for Caedmon in the late ’60s,” she recalls, “I began reading her letters, and they made such an impression on me. I loved her way of expressing herself. After I made a second record, someone asked me to do a school program, and I did that on Long Island for a while. Then I was asked to do a benefit for a church group one Sunday night at the Booth Theatre. Charles Nelson Reilly came to see that. He fell in love with Emily Dickinson, and that was the beginning of the quest to make her life a play.”

By this time, of course, Harris almost channels Dickinson. Explaining the writer’s universal appeal, she takes a breath and, with her characteristic soft raspiness and faultless diction, delivers all 16 lines of a Dickinson poem (“There’s a certain Slant of light/Winter afternoons —/That oppresses, like the Heft/Of Cathedral tunes —/. . . When it comes, the Landscape listens —/Shadows — hold their breath —/When it does, ’tis like the Distance/On the look of Death”) as if she were speaking her own thoughts to an intimate friend.

And the actress, who could as easily put her feet up in her West Chatham home, is not daunted by the thought of a lengthy tour. “I love to work in different theaters. I like the experience of traveling to different parts of the country. I love every aspect of the theater. I love seeing different stages and theaters. We have some extraordinary theaters in this country.” As for retiring, she says, “I don’t want to stop until I can’t remember lines. In many of these cities [on the current tour], we have five performances on the weekend, and that’s tiring, especially when it’s only you. But I think it would wear out a younger person too.”

Nothing, it would seem, wears out Julie Harris, who last summer could be found sharing billing with three relative unknowns in The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the tiny Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. But The Belle of Amherst is something special. “A woman in Seattle in October said, ‘This play is all about love, isn’t it?’,” Harris recalls. “Yes, that’s what it’s all about — that extraordinary current that comes out from her work.” Even sequestered in her house in Amherst, Dickinson “knew it all,” Harris sighs. “Yes, she knew it all.”

The Belle of Amherst is at the Shubert Theatre February 6 through 11. Tickets are $45 to $65; call (800) 447-7400.

When a luminous Julie Harris first starred in The Belle of Amherst, in 1976, she won the last of her five Tony Awards, the most ever won by a performer. Now, at 75, the indefatigable actress has reunited with the play’s original director, Charles Nelson Reilly, and its original producer, Don Gregory, for a 25th-anniversary tour of William Luce’s one-woman play about Emily Dickinson, the 19th-century Amherst recluse who launched a thousand (plus) verses. Harris, who in addition to her lustrous 50-year stage career played opposite James Dean in East of Eden and did a seven-year stint on TV’s Knots Land, is the rare theatrical legend who will deign to tour. But The Belle of Amherst will hit 15 cities in seven months, including a stop at Boston’s Shubert Theatre this week.

The lure of Dickinson, Harris says, is “the power of her poetry, and her originality, and her spirit, and her great humor. All of those things. Her independence. By that I mean, in her day, in the 1850s, religion was a very, very strong influence. And all of her family — mother, father, brother, sister — belonged to the Church. Emily somehow resisted. That strong Calvinist religion didn’t appeal to her, so she simply didn’t become a member of the Church. She said, however, that she always had by her bed the Bible and Shakespeare.”

Harris was involved with Emily Dickinson even before Luce — who so skillfully wove the poet’s verses and letters into the piece that it’s hard to know where Dickinson’s words leave off and his pick up — wrote The Belle of Amherst for her. “When I did a recording of her poems and letters for Caedmon in the late ’60s,” she recalls, “I began reading her letters, and they made such an impression on me. I loved her way of expressing herself. After I made a second record, someone asked me to do a school program, and I did that on Long Island for a while. Then I was asked to do a benefit for a church group one Sunday night at the Booth Theatre. Charles Nelson Reilly came to see that. He fell in love with Emily Dickinson, and that was the beginning of the quest to make her life a play.”

By this time, of course, Harris almost channels Dickinson. Explaining the writer’s universal appeal, she takes a breath and, with her characteristic soft raspiness and faultless diction, delivers all 16 lines of a Dickinson poem (“There’s a certain Slant of light/Winter afternoons —/That oppresses, like the Heft/Of Cathedral tunes —/. . . When it comes, the Landscape listens —/Shadows — hold their breath —/When it does, ’tis like the Distance/On the look of Death”) as if she were speaking her own thoughts to an intimate friend.

And the actress, who could as easily put her feet up in her West Chatham home, is not daunted by the thought of a lengthy tour. “I love to work in different theaters. I like the experience of traveling to different parts of the country. I love every aspect of the theater. I love seeing different stages and theaters. We have some extraordinary theaters in this country.” As for retiring, she says, “I don’t want to stop until I can’t remember lines. In many of these cities [on the current tour], we have five performances on the weekend, and that’s tiring, especially when it’s only you. But I think it would wear out a younger person too.”

Nothing, it would seem, wears out Julie Harris, who last summer could be found sharing billing with three relative unknowns in The Beauty Queen of Leenane at the tiny Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. But The Belle of Amherst is something special. “A woman in Seattle in October said, ‘This play is all about love, isn’t it?’,” Harris recalls. “Yes, that’s what it’s all about — that extraordinary current that comes out from her work.” Even sequestered in her house in Amherst, Dickinson “knew it all,” Harris sighs. “Yes, she knew it all.”

The Belle of Amherst is at the Shubert Theatre February 6 through 11. Tickets are $45 to $65; call (800) 447-7400.