December 10, 1830- May 15, 1886
Emily Dickinson, born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, had a unique upbringing and literary influences that shaped her poetry. She briefly attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley before returning home. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in politics, serving in Congress for one term. Living next door was her brother, Austin, who pursued a career in law, and his wife, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson’s younger sister, Lavinia, also resided at home, and both Austin and Lavinia provided intellectual companionship for Dickinson throughout her life.
The poetry of Emily Dickinson was greatly influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her exposure to the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town. These factors contributed to her adoption of a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. She held great admiration for the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Although she initially refrained from reading the poetry of her contemporary, Walt Whitman, due to rumors of its scandalous nature, both poets are now recognized as pioneers of a distinctively American poetic voice. Despite her prolific writing and inclusion of poems in letters to friends, Dickinson did not receive public recognition during her lifetime. Her first volume of work was published posthumously in 1890, with the final volume published in 1955. She passed away in Amherst in 1886.
Following Dickinson’s death, her family discovered forty handbound volumes containing nearly 1,800 poems, often referred to as “fascicles.” These booklets were created by folding and sewing together five or six sheets of stationery paper, with Dickinson copying what appeared to be final versions of her poems. The handwritten poems exhibit a range of dash-like marks in various sizes and directions, some even appearing vertically. Initially, the poems were published without being bound and were edited according to the preferences of her early editors, who removed her annotations. The current standard version of her poems replaces her dashes with an en-dash, a typographic symbol that closely resembles her original markings.
