Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a promi- nent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life highly introverted. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Semi- nary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friend- ships between her and others depended entirely upon cor- respondence. While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.[2] The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publish- ers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dick- inson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and [3] The Dickinson children (Emily on the left), ca. 1840. From the punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of Dickinson Room at Houghton Library, Harvard University. death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family.[6] Two Although Dickinson’s acquaintances were most likely hundred years earlier, her patrilineal ancestors had ar- aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in rived in the New World—in the Puritan Great Migra- 1886 — when Lavinia, Dickinson’s younger sister, dis- tion—where they prospered.[7] Emily Dickinson’s pater- covered her cache of poems — that the breadth of her nal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, had almost single- work became apparent to the public. Her first collec- handedly founded Amherst College.[8] In 1813, he built tion of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquain- the homestead, a large mansion on the town’s Main Street, tances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis that became the focus of Dickinson family life for the bet- Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A com- ter part of a century.[9] Samuel Dickinson’s eldest son, plete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry be- Edward, was treasurer of Amherst College for nearly came available for the first time when scholar Thomas forty years, served numerous terms as a State Legisla- H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in tor, and represented the Hampshire district in the United 1955. Despite some unfavorable reception and skepti- States Congress. On May 6, 1828, he married Emily Nor- cism over the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding cross from Monson. They had three children: her literary prowess, Dickinson is now almost universally considered to be one of the most significant of all Amer- ican poets.[4][5] • William Austin (1829–1895), known as Austin, Aust or Awe • 1 Life Emily Elizabeth • Lavinia Norcross (1833–1899), known as Lavinia or [10] 1.1 Family and early childhood Vinnie Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the family’s By all accounts, young Emily was a well-behaved girl. homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, On an extended visit to Monson when she was two, 1 2 1 LIFE Emily’s Aunt Lavinia described Emily as “perfectly well dents, such as Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Jane Humphrey, & contented—She is a very good child & but little and Susan Huntington Gilbert (who later married Emily’s trouble.”[11] Emily’s aunt also noted the girl’s affinity for brother Austin). music and her particular talent for the piano, which she [12] In 1845, a religious revival took place in Amherst, re- called “the moosic". sulting in 46 confessions of faith among Dickinson’s Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story build- peers.[27] Dickinson wrote to a friend the following year: ing on Pleasant Street.[13] Her education was “ambitiously “I never enjoyed such perfect peace and happiness as the classical for a Victorian girl”.[14] Her father wanted his short time in which I felt I had found my savior.”[28] She children well-educated and he followed their progress went on to say that it was her “greatest pleasure to com- even while away on business. When Emily was seven, he mune alone with the great God & to feel that he would lis- wrote home, reminding his children to “keep school, and ten to my prayers.”[28] The experience did not last: Dick- learn, so as to tell me, when I come home, how many new inson never made a formal declaration of faith and at- things you have learned”.[15] While Emily consistently de- tended services regularly for only a few years.[29] After scribed her father in a warm manner, her correspondence her church-going ended, about 1852, she wrote a poem suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof. opening: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – / I In a letter to a confidante, Emily wrote she “always ran keep it, staying at Home”.[30] Home to Awe [Austin] when a child, if anything befell During the last year of her stay at the Academy, Emily me. He was an awful Mother, but I liked him better than [16] became friendly with Leonard Humphrey, its popular none.” new young principal. After finishing her final term at On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia the Academy on August 10, 1847, Dickinson began at- started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys’ tending Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary school that had opened to female students just two years (which later became Mount Holyoke College) in South earlier.[13] At about the same time, her father purchased a Hadley, about ten miles (16 km) from Amherst.[31] She house on North Pleasant Street.[17] Emily’s brother Austin was at the seminary for only ten months. Although she later described this large new home as the “mansion” liked the girls at Holyoke, Dickinson made no lasting over which he and Emily presided as “lord and lady” friendships there.[32] The explanations for her brief stay while their parents were absent.[18] The house overlooked at Holyoke differ considerably: either she was in poor Amherst’s burial ground, described by one local minister health, her father wanted to have her at home, she rebelled as treeless and “forbidding”.[17] against the evangelical fervor present at the school, she disliked the discipline-minded teachers, or she was sim- ply homesick.[33] Whatever the specific reason for leav- 1.2 Teenage years ing Holyoke, her brother Austin appeared on March 25, 1848, to “bring [her] home at all events”.[34] Back in Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy, taking Amherst, Dickinson occupied her time with household [35] classes in English and classical literature, Latin, botany, activities. She took up baking for the family and en- geology, history, “mental philosophy,” and arithmetic.[20] joyed attending local events and activities in the budding [36] Daniel Taggart Fiske, the school’s principal at the time, college town. would later recall that Dickinson was “very bright” and “an excellent scholar, of exemplary deportment, faithful in all school duties”.[21] Although she had a few terms off 1.3 Early influences and writing due to illness—the longest of which was in 1845–1846, when she was enrolled for only eleven weeks[22]—she en- When she was eighteen, Dickinson’s family befriended a joyed her strenuous studies, writing to a friend that the young attorney by the name of Benjamin Franklin New- Academy was “a very fine school”.[23] ton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the “deep- Newton’s death, he had been “with my Father two years, before going to Worcester – in pursuing his studies, and ening menace” of death, especially the deaths of those [37] who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her sec- was much in our family.” Although their relationship ond cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and was probably not romantic, Newton was a formative in- died in April 1844, Emily was traumatized.[24] Recalling fluence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson referred to, vari- the incident two years later, Emily wrote that “it seemed [38] to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch ously, as her tutor, preceptor or master. over her or even look at her face.”[25] She became so Newton likely introduced her to the writings of William melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with fam- Wordsworth, and his gift to her of Ralph Waldo Emer- ily in Boston to recover.[23] With her health and spirits son's first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. restored, she soon returned to Amherst Academy to con- She wrote later that he, “whose name my Father’s Law tinue her studies.[26] During this period, she first met peo- Student taught me, has touched the secret Spring”.[39] ple who were to become lifelong friends and correspon- Newton held her in high regard, believing in and recog- 1.4 Adulthood and seclusion 3 nizing her as a poet. When he was dying of tuberculosis, he wrote to her, saying that he would like to live until she achieved the greatness he foresaw.[39] Biographers be- lieve that Dickinson’s statement of 1862—"When a little Girl, I had a friend, who taught me Immortality – but ven- turing too near, himself – he never returned”—refers to Newton.[40] Dickinson was familiar not only with the Bible but also with contemporary popular literature.[41] She was proba- bly influenced by Lydia Maria Child's Letters from New York, another gift from Newton[24] (after reading it, she gushed “This then is a book! And there are more of them!"[24]).