Author Spotlight: Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is known as one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century. She is known for her unique punctuation and style, as well as the skeptical and exploratory nature of her poems. Many of her poems have become much-loved classics, but most of them were not discovered or published until after her death.

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She came from a wealthy family and was given a first-class education at the Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Seminary.

Emily never married, but throughout her life, she had many close friendships. She was a favorite aunt to her nieces and popular among the neighborhood children.

Emily's brother Austin married Susan Gilbert in 1856. Emily and Susan became very close. Over the years, Emily sent her poems to Susan, and the two corresponded regularly about poetry and life. Emily was later to say that Susan had been her first and greatest muse, cheerleader and source of support.

She regularly wrote to others as well. She enjoyed a lively correspondence with magazine editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, various school friends, her brother, her relatives, and several ministers, scholars, and writers whom she admired. At the same time, however, she started to have less and less physical contact with people.

Emily disliked the constant social visiting that was required of young women in her social class. She also disliked most domestic duties, although she excelled at baking and gardening. Emily's garden at her family home was locally famous for its hundreds of beautifully displayed and tended flowers. Emily started a herbarium, a book with drawings and descriptions of various plants when she was nine. She was still updating it when she died.

After the death of her beloved dog Carlo, Emily became even more isolated, rarely venturing out of her home. She acquired the nickname "the Nun of Amherst," because she always wore white and never left her house.

Emily died on May 15, 1886, at the age of 55. During her lifetime, only a handful of her poems had been published. After her death, her family discovered that she had spent her last few years binding her poems into hand-sewn fabric books. There were 400 of these books containing some 1800 poems.

Her sister Lavinia and Susan Gilbert worked to get the poems published after her death, believing that Emily would have wanted that. Emily's poems were first published in 1860. They have never been out of print since and have reached a large audience and been taught in schools and universities all over the world.