Though Emily Dickinson (b. December 10, 1830) enjoyed little fame in her lifetime, she is now regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the 19th century. She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a wealthy family. Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler, was one of the founders of Amherst College, and her her father, Edward, was a lawyer who served as treasurer for the college. He was also politically active and served on the Massachusetts General Court, Massachusetts Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Little is known about Dickinson's mother, Emily Norcross, much of whose life was plagued by chronic illness.

Dickinson grew up in the family's houses in Amherst with her older brothers William and Austin and their younger sister Lavinia. In 1840, Emily attended the Amherst Academy and studied English, classical literature, Latin, religion, history, mathematics, geology, and biology. At the age of 17, she went to Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley. After less than a year, however, she fell ill and returned home to Amherst. Dickinson never returned to school, and left home only to visit family in Boston, Cambridge, and Connecticut.

During a 10-year religious revival in Western Massachusetts in 1840, Dickinson dedicated her labors to writing poetry. Her use of ballad, hymn meter, use of dashes and unconventional capitalization often make her poems recognizable at a single glance. Since Dickinson wrote most of her poems during the Civil War, scholars believe that the socio-political climate of America at that time contributed to the tense feeling that pervades her general tone. Though she enlisted the help of friend and literary critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson to publish her poems, she lost interest after he attemtped to modify her work along the lines of the romantic style that was popular in the 19th century. By her death, only 7 of her poems had been published.

Though Emily Dickinson is frequently portrayed as a recluse in historical biographies, recent accounts offer speculation on certain romantic attachments with men and women that she might have had in her earlier years. However, nothing about her sexuality is conclusive, as her family burned several of Dickinson's letters after her death. 

Dickinson died at home of Bright's disease on May 15th, 1886. Her poems were collected and edited by Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, who tried to conform her work to late 19th century standards. In the 1890's, several volumes and editions found an immediate audience with the general public, only to fall out of favor for several decades. In the 20th century, the rise of the feminist movement and modern poetry gave Dickinson's poetry a new and appreciative audience, who purchased copies of The Single Hound (1914), The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924) and Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (1929). Only in 1955, with the release of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, did her work appear in the same style and punctuation in which the author had left them.

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Articles About Dickinson, Emily

Emily Dickinson's Homestead

November 27, 2007

As a junior in high school, studying American Literature for the first time, I claimed Emily Dickinson as my poet. I felt as though I alone were given the gift to decode her poems. The rest of my class wanted to read more accessible poetry; they hated Dickinson's verse and were indifferent to her life story. Her use of elusive imagery and fourth-definition choices for words frustrated them but only increased my desire to study the poems more closely. I wanted to understand enough about Emily Dickinson so that I could emulate her.