Emily Dickinson
(1830–1886)

Emily Dickinson, a 19th century American poet, lived her entire life in obscurity in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. She published only four poems during her lifetime; yet she wrote some 1,775 poems and poem fragments, many of which she carefully inscribed and bound by hand in "packets" discovered after her death. Her lyrics—fresh, surprising, often difficult, always vivid—represent one of America's most passionate poetic spirits.

Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, into a prominent Amherst family. Her grandfather was a lawyer and a fervent conservative Protestant; her father, Edward Dickinson, was a lawyer as well. Emily Norcross, Dickinson's mother, fit the 19th-century ideal of a dutiful wife, yet she was often sickly and emotionally distant from her children. Dickinson later wrote, "I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled."

As a child, Dickinson played with her older brother, Austin, and younger sister, Lavinia. She learned to play the piano and enjoyed music throughout her life.

All three Dickinson children attended primary school in Amherst. In 1840, Emily entered Amherst Academy, but her schooling was often interrupted by ill health. In 1847, Dickinson went away to Mount Holyoke Seminary for Girls, an intensely religious and isolated school where Dickinson endured homesickness and underwent a religious crisis. During the 1840s, New England was seized by religious revivals. Dickinson came under pressure from classmates, teachers, and her family to profess herself "saved." After much thought, she declined. Dickinson's refusal met with displeasure from the headmistress, teachers, and many students at Mount Holyoke. In 1848, she returned to Amherst. Dickinson continued to attend church and remained intensely interested in religion throughout her life, but this early skepticism demonstrated her ability to choose her own, very personal path.

Dickinson spent the decade leading up to the Civil War living quietly in Amherst. Her close friends included Susan Gilbert, who married her brother Austin; Reverend and Mrs. Charles Wadsworth; and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Daily Republican—the only periodical to publish Dickinson's poems during her lifetime. Lively and socially engaged, she wrote numerous letters to friends and began to compose her poetry in earnest. By 1858, she was gathering her poems together in packets bound by thread.

Dickinson never referred to the American Civil War in her poems, but she was touched by the changes it brought. In 1861, she composed an astonishing two hundred poems; in 1863, more than three hundred.

On April 15, 1862, she took the courageous step of writing to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a well-known poet of the day, asking for his advice about several of her poems. He replied that her poetry was "not [suitable] for publication," yet was intrigued by what he later described as "a wholly new and original poetic genius." His reply put into words what Dickinson seemed to know instinctively: her poetry was too unconventional to gain acceptance in her lifetime.

She continued to correspond with Higginson, calling herself his "scholar." By 1865, she had become reclusive. In 1869, Higginson asked her to visit him in Boston, but she refused, saying that she no longer left her father's property.

During Dickinson's later years, her poetry writing waned and her isolation increased. She spoke to visitors only through her bedroom door and wrote long letters. In 1874, her father died. Her mother suffered a stroke the following year. Dickinson nursed her mother until her mother's death in 1882. Then, her close friend Samuel Bowles died in 1878.

That year, Dickinson began a close friendship with Judge Otis Lord. Their relationship deepened but Dickinson refused his proposal of marriage. Lord died in 1884. Until her death in 1886, Dickinson continued to correspond with friends and relatives.

From the late 18th through the first half of the 19th century, poets and artists in Europe and America began to break away from classical rules limiting expression and imagination. They often turned directly to nature for inspiration or subject matter. William Wordsworth found nature to be both a mirror, reflecting his own nature, and a lamp, guiding him to vital truths and insights. John Keats, another English poet, is renowned for his use of lush nature imagery.

In America, the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau extolled the pleasures of nature. The painter Thomas Cole depicted nature as it reveals divine and supernatural power. In Dickinson's poetry, too, nature is sometimes a window to the spiritual and divine.

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