Emily Dickinson
(1830–1886)
It was said of Emily Dickinson that her life story could be told in very few words: She was born in Amherst, a small town in Massachusetts. She had an independent and intelligent mind but was also extremely sensitive and shy. As she grew older, she withdrew more and more from the world, seldom meeting outsiders and rarely leaving her father's house and garden.
In 1862, Emily Dickinson experienced an emotional upheaval that still remains a mystery to her biographers and critics. The most common explanation, reflected in her poetry, is that she was in love with a man who could not return her love. This experience led to a burst of creativity. In that same year, Dickinson sent four poems and a letter to the poetry critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who discouraged her from publishing.
Dickinson dressed only in white and wrote her poetry on small scraps of paper that she stitched together into little packets and kept hidden in her room. Only a handful of these poems were published in her lifetime, none with her consent, and several without her name. It was only after her death that her many packets of poems were discovered. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had discouraged her from publishing during her life, oversaw the publication of Dickinson's work.
Today, Dickinson's poems are recognized as some of the most original poetry of the nineteenth century, and Emily Dickinson, who died almost totally unknown to the public, is considered one of the great poets of her time.
