Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
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
Dickinson seldom left
Amherst
• Her one lengthy absence was a year at Mt. Holyoke
Female Seminary (1847-48), in South Hadley, ten
long miles away, where she was intensely
homesick for her “own DEAR HOME.”
• Dickinson declared home to be holy, “the definition
of God,” a place of “Infinite power.”
• She admired Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ideas,
but did not go next door to meet him when he
stayed there during a lecture tour in 1857.
Religion played an
important role in her life.
• Dickinson was terrorized by old-fashioned
sermons about damnation and by the
frequency of death in that age of high
infant and childhood mortality.
• As her friends moved away and got
married, she gradually became estranged
from the religious beliefs of her
community.
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
• 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
• Her most productive period coincided with the civil
war, during which she wrote about 800 poems
Literary Influences
• She knew the poetry of Longfellow, Holmes,
and Lowell.
• She identified with Hawthorne’s isolated,
gnarled, idiosyncratic characters.
• Emerson was an enduring favorite.
• She loved Thoreau, recognizing a kindred
spirit in the independent, nature-loving man
who delighted in being the village crank of
Concord.
Other Influences
• The Bible
• Dead and living British
writers
– Her knowledge of
Shakespeare was
minute and extremely
personal.
Dickinson’s Style
Short Meter (8.6.8.6)--Dickinson
found poetic freedom within the
confines of this meter.
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides-You may have met him--did you not
His notice sudden is--
Slant Rhyme
Within the structure form of short meter, she multiplied
possibilities by substituting consonance and
assonance for rhyme.
. . . Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Upbraiding in the Sun
When stopping to secure it
It wrinkled and was gone--
Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me-I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--
Themes
Dickinson often brought dazzling
originality to overwrought topics.
•Life
•Love, including Marriage and the position of
women in society.
•Nature--she was well-schooled in
contemporary
science.
•Time and Eternity
•Death and Mourning
•Religion and Faith
•Isolation and Depression
•Poetry and Language
Her Grave
Emily Dickinson
The Homestead 1813
The Homestead
Repainted Homestead
Dickinson’s Room
Dickinson’s Room
Newly Discovered
Photo