About the Author

Born on December 10, 1830, Emily Dickinson was the daughter of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, a prominent Amherst, Massachusetts, family. Her grandfather was a founder of Amherst College, and her father, who served the college as both treasurer and trustee, was a respected lawyer who later became a member of Congress. Emily Dickinson grew up in a household where her mother apparently bowed to the wishes of her stern and autocratic husband. In addition, Edward Dickinson exercised strong control over his children, and Emily's brother, Austin, gave up his desire to move west in deference to his father. Neither Emily nor her sister, Lavinia, married; however, Austin did defy his father in marrying Susan Gilbert, to whom Edward objected because she was a sophisticated New Yorker. Despite Emily's father's objections, however, Emily and Susan became fast friends, and Emily found in her sister-in-law the soul mate she had been lacking in the conservative, church-dominated Amherst community. Susan proved a source of mental and emotional nourishment that Emily had not found in her one foray outside the Amherst community when, in 1847, at her father's wishes, she enrolled in the South Hadley Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College). During her time at school, Emily's strong independence was severely challenged by the rigorous religious orthodoxy expected of students, and she left after only a year. Following her return to Amherst, she remained in her childhood home for the rest of her life, making only very brief visits to Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia.

Dickinson's reclusiveness contributed to the myths that have grown up around her memory. She is often depicted as an eccentric, retiring maiden lady who spent her time baking her famed "black bread" (probably a molasses gingerbread) and locking herself in her room to write poetry. However, she almost certainly lived a far more lively, engaged life than these images would suggest. Her friendship with her sister-in-law, Susan, led to their reading and discussing books smuggled by Austin into the Dickinson household past the censoring eyes of their father. Also, the Dickinson family was held in great respect throughout the state of Massachusetts, and thus a steady stream of prominent visitors arrived at the Dickinson house and at the neighboring house of Austin and Susan. In addition, Dickinson was a lively and prolific letter writer who kept up an engaged, thoughtful, and witty correspondence with many friends, relatives, and literary figures such as the poet Helen Hunt Jackson. Dickinson enjoyed the friendship and encouragement of at least two male mentors, the Reverent Charles Wadsworth and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a poetry editor for The Atlantic Monthly.

The Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a charismatic minister whom Dickinson apparently met in Philadelphia in 1855 during one of her few trips away from Amherst, has been identified by some scholars as the tragic and unattainable (because he was married) love of Dickinson's life. However, her most recent biographers question the supposition that Dickinson became a recluse in response to her unrequited love for Wadsworth. Rather than longing for him as a lover, Dickinson seemed to see him, instead, as a "preceptor" and as her "safest friend," a man with great intelligence and knowledge of the world who could read her poetry and give responses that she highly valued.

In 1861, when she was 31, Dickinson submitted several poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson at The Atlantic Monthly requesting that he read them and "say if my Verse is alive." Her purpose in sending the poems seems to have been a desire not for publication but rather for the critical response she believed Higginson could give. However, in one of her early letters, she did ask him to help her struggle with the question of how a poet can write for publication and still remain true to her own artistic vision. She continued her correspondence with Higginson throughout her lifetime and respected him as a mentor. It is interesting to note, however, that there is no evidence that she revised any of her poems to the more conventional forms Higginson suggested.

Although Dickinson scholars differ in reporting the exact number, it appears that no more than twelve, and possibly as few as six, poems were published in her lifetime. When she died, in 1886, she left behind instructions for her sister to destroy the letters she had received from her large circle of correspondents. As Lavinia was gathering these papers, she came across a box that held over 1,100 poems, some already bound into neat packets. Since Dickinson had not specifically required that the poems be destroyed, Lavinia, in consultation with Dickinson's confidante and sister-in-law, Susan, saved the manuscripts and, after various complications, convinced Thomas Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd to edit and publish a selection of the poems.

Dickinson's poetry, with its innovative punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks, was indeed unusual for the nineteenth century and today remains arresting in its freshness and lack of conventionality. While the poems contain the occasional comma, period, exclamation mark, or question mark, the dash is by far the most common punctuation. In the original manuscripts, the dashes are far from uniform. Some seem slanted upward, some down. Some are quite short, others long. There has been much scholarly speculation about the meaning of the dashes. A convincing argument can be made for seeing these dashes as the poet's invitation to the reader to slow down and pay particular attention to the words or phrases they surround.

Dickinson's poems confront difficult questions relating to faith, mortality, love, and friendship. Her stunning images reflect a connection to the mystical, transcendent dimensions of life yet also express her highly original and witty vie w of the details of day-to-day living. While some of the poems no doubt reflect the opinions and attitudes of the poet herself, it's important to remember that she understood the concept of the literary persona and spoke about the "self" in her poetry as "a supposed person." In her literary work, as well as in her relationships with her family, friends, and community, Dickinson was a person far ahead of her time, a visionary with a keen understanding of the intricacy of human hearts, minds, and spirits.

Major works by Dickinson

Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)
Poems: Second Series (1891)
Letters of Emily Dickinson (1894)
Poems: Third Series (1896)
The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (1914)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924)
Further Poems of Emily Dickinson: Withheld from Publication by Her Sister Lavinia (1929)
Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminisces (1932)
Unpublished Poems of Emily Dickinson (1935)
Bolts of Melody: New Poems of Emily Dickinson (1945)
Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems (1962)

Dickinson and the Web

This is Dickinson's start page from the Academy of American Poets. It contains a photo, links to poems, a bio, a bibliography, and more.

Want to read more by this author? Here's a page with links to The Complete Poems in etext.

Want to contact other Dickinson enthusiasts? This is the homepage of the Emily Dickinson International Society.

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