Emily Dickinson Biography and Poems
American Poet, Considered One the 19th Century's Finest
Dec 4, 2008
Emily Dickinson was an American poet, one of the greatest poets in the English language.
Though virtually unknown in her lifetime, along with Walt Whitman, she has been regarded as one of the two quintessential American poets of the 19th century. Dickinson lived a hermetic life. Although she wrote numerous poems, only a handful of them were published during her lifetime, anonymously or probably without her knowledge.
Early Life of Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a prominent family well-known for their political and educational influence. Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College. Her father, Edward Dickinson, politically well-placed, was a lawyer and treasurer for the college. He also served on the Massachusetts General Court, the Massachusetts Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, to which in 1852 he was elected as a Whig candidate. Emily's mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was chronically ill.
Siblings
Her older brother, William Austin Dickinson, was usually known by his middle name. In 1856, he married Emily's best friend, Susan Gilbert, and made his home next door to the house in which Emily lived most of her life. Their younger sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson, called "Vinnie," encouraged the posthumous editing and publishing of her sister's poetry.
Education
In 1840, Emily was educated at the nearby Amherst Academy, a former boys' school which opened to female students just two years earlier. She studied English and classical literature, learned Latin and read the Aeneid over several years. She also learned other subjects including religion, history, mathematics, geology and biology.
At 17, Dickinson attended Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later become Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. In less than a year at the seminary, she went back home and did not return to school. The speculation was that she was homesick or that she refused to sign an oath stating she would devote her life to Jesus Christ.
Later Years
Dickinson left home only for short trips to visit relatives in Boston, Cambridge, and Connecticut. For decades, popular wisdom portrayed her as an agoraphobic recluse. She lived most of her life in the family's houses in Amherst, which have been preserved as the Emily Dickinson Museum.
Emily Dickinson asked Susan, her best friend and sister-in-law, to critique her poems. She died on May 15, 1886, from nephritis, reported as Bright's disease. After her death, her family found some 40 hand-bound volumes of more than 1700 of her poems.
Dickinson's Thoughts on Pain
(its timelessness and dominance)
"Pain has an Element of Blank;
It cannot recollect
When it begun, or if there was
A time when it was not."
"It has no future but itself;
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain."
(From Pain)
Poems by Emily Dickinson
(Published after she died)
- Poems by Emily Dickinson, 1890
- Poems: Second Series
- Poems: Third Series, 1896
- Then Single Hound, 1914
- The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 3 vols.), 1955
- The Letters of Emily, 3 vols, 1958
- Final Harvest, 1961
Sources:
McGovern, Una, editor. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2002
Goring, Rosemary, editor. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994
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