Emily
Dickinson
December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
• Born December 10, 1830; lived almost all of
her life in her family's house in Amherst, MA
• 1840, Emily was educated at the nearby
Amherst Academy
•She studied English and classical literature, and Latin;
also was taught in other subjects including religion,
history, mathematics, geology, and biology.
• In 1847, at 17, Dickinson began attending
Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female
Seminary ( Mount Holyoke College)
•Returned home after less than a year at the Seminary,
and she did not return to the school. Some speculate that
she was homesick, however there is also speculation that
she refused to sign an oath stating she would devote her
life to Jesus Christ
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
• Recluse? After Holyoke, she left home only
for short trips to visit nearby relatives.
Always wore white.
• Ten poems published during life
• Relationships? Wrote “passionate” poetry
•“Master”
•Sister-in-law Susan Gilbert
• Dickinson died on May 15, 1886 of a kidney
disease
• After her death, her family found 40 handbound volumes containing more than 1,700
of her poems.
Some Quotes…
“I dwell in Possibility.”
“Heaven is what I cannot reach!”
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed,”
“Water, is taught by thirst”
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-Success in Circuit lies.”
Dickinson &
Transcendentalism
[L]ike not a few Transcendentalists, she might
have written on the lintels of her door-post,
Whim. That was her guiding divinity, Whim in a
high sense: not unruliness, for all her
impishness, but complete subjection to the inner
dictate. She obeyed it in her mode of life, in her
friendships, in her letters, in her poems. It
makes her poetry eminently spontaneous—as
fresh and artless as experience itself….
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later National
Literature, Part II.
Dickinson &
Puritanism
The inwardness and moral ruggedness of
Puritanism she inherited mainly through her
father, Edward Dickinson, lawyer and treasurer
of Amherst College, a Puritan of the old type,
whose heart, according to his daughter, was
“pure and terrible.”
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later
National Literature, Part II.
Dickinson &
Puritanism
There is no better example of the New England
tendency to moral revery than this last pale
Indian-summer flower of Puritanism. She is
said literally to have spent years without
passing the doorstep, and many more years
without leaving her father’s grounds. After the
death of her parents, not to mention her dog
Carlo, she retired still further within herself…
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later
National Literature, Part II.
Something to Do
•Draw a graveyard with at least 6
gravestones. (2-3 minutes)
•Browse through the book and collect 6
poems relating to death
•On one line of each grave
marker, write the first line and
page # of the poem
RIP
“I never hear the
word “escape” (p.1)
•On another line, write a tiny,
thoughtful
∞
∞
∞
synopsis
(summary) of the
The narrator gets
narrator’s
attitude toward
death
really excited by
stories of escape and
wishes he/she could
escape…from life(?)