Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 and died on May 15, 1886 was an American poet. Born in Amherst,Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy forseven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as aneccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most ofher friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteenhundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers tofit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lacktitles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, tworecurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although she continued to write in her last years, Dickinson stopped editing and organizing her poems. Shealso exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers. Lavinia, who also never married, remained at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.