Emily Dickinson

Who is Emily Dickinson?

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family and spent most of her life in relative seclusion in her family home. Though she wrote nearly 1,800 poems, fewer than a dozen were published during her lifetime, most anonymously and heavily edited. Her poetry is distinctive for its compressed language, slant rhyme, unconventional punctuation with frequent dashes, and profound meditations on death, immortality, nature, love, and the inner self. After her death, her sister Lavinia discovered the bulk of her manuscripts, and the first collection of her work appeared in 1890. Later scholarly editions, especially Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 edition, restored her original wording and punctuation. Once obscure, Dickinson is now recognized as one of the most original and important poets in the English language and a central figure in American literature.

Sources: Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) · Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (1974) · Emily Dickinson, Poems (1890, first published collection)