Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson

• 1830-1886

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Born the second of three children in Amherst,
  Massachusetts
• Father was a lawyer and one of the wealthiest and
  most respected citizens in the town, as well as a
  conservative leader of the church
• Dickinson grew up regularly attending services at
  the Congregational First Church of Christ
  (Congregational churches essentially followed the
  New England Puritan tradition)
• She attended Amherst Academy, where she studied a
  modern curriculum of English and the sciences, as
  well as Latin, botany and mathematics

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Except for one year at Mount Holyoke Female
  Seminary (1847-48) and a visit to Washington,
  D.C., to visit her father, she spent her entire
  life in Amherst
• In her family library, she had access to many
  religious works as well as books by Emerson,
  other transcendentalists and current magazines
• Around 1850, she begins to write verse, which she
  circulates among a circle of friends
• Her poem Sic transit gloria mundi was published
  in the Springfield Daily Republican in 1852

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• She spent sociable evenings with guests such as
  Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Daily
  Republican
• She also enjoyed dancing, buggy rides, parlor
  games, and other forms of entertainment until she
  began to seclude herself
• Around 1860, she stopped visiting with other
  people and became a recluse
• In 1862, her poem Safe in their alabaster
  chambers appeared in the Springfield Daily
  Republican

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Around that time, she began her correspondence
  with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a local
  intellectual, journalist, and anti-slavery
  activist
• She asked Higginson for advice with her poetry
• Higginson had published an article entitled
  Letter to a Young Contributor, in the Atlantic
  Monthly, in which he advised budding young
  writers
• Dickinson sent him four poems, along with a
  letter asking "Are you too deeply occupied to
  say if my Verse is alive?"
• Higginson responded with much praise and gentle
  criticism (surgery), but he advised her against
  publishing her poetry because of its raw form and
  subject matter

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Higginson became Dickinsons intellectual mentor,
  even though he admitted feeling out of her league
  in poetical talent
• After Dickinsons death, Higginson collaborated
  with Mabel Loomis Todd in publishing volumes of
  her poetry
• His edition was heavily edited for conventional
  punctuation and form, as well as content
• But, his edition helped Dickinsons poetry gain
  quick national prominence

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• While becoming more reclusive, Dickinson
  intensified correspondence with friends and
  output of poetry
• She suffered from eye-trouble in 1864 and 1865
• The last 12 years she spent in self-imposed
  isolation in her parents home
• Allegedly, Dickinson dressed entirely in white
  and communicated only indirectly with visitors
  and friends, from behind a folding screen or via
  notes and gifts in a basket she let down from her
  window into the garden

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• She spent most of these years reading and writing
  poetry
• Her most productive period coincided with the
  civil war, during which she wrote about 800 poems
• She called writing poetry her business, My
  Business is Circumference (after Emersons term
  for poetry)
• She copied many of her poems into hand-sewn small
  booklets or fascicles and sent them as poetic
  gifts to family and friends

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Dickinson never married, although several men
  played an important role in her life
• Lively correspondence with Benjamin Franklin
  Newton on literary topics of the day
• Long correspondence with Higginson, although he
  ultimately did not recognize the worth of her
  poetry
• Close emotional bond to Charles Wadsworth, whom
  she had met on her journey home from Washington

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Emily Dickinson Biography

• Strained relationship to her sister-in-law, Susan
  Gilbert, who was apparently the object of her
  desire in such homoerotic poems as Her face was
  in a bed of hair
• When Dickinson died in 1886 of Brights disease,
  her family and friends were surprised at the
  amount of work she left behind
• Her sister Lavinia found 40 notebooks and loose
  poems in a locked box in her bedroom
• The poems were unarranged and only 24 were titled

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Emily Dickinson, Daguerreotype by Josiah Gilbert
Holland , circa February-April 1848.
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The Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts
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The Dickinson Homestead in Amherst,
Massachusetts(garden)
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The Dickinson Homestead in Amherst,
Massachusetts(bedroom)
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The Dickinson Homestead in Amherst,
Massachusetts(Dress)