Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet.

Born in
Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly
introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her
youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's
house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant
for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of
her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.

Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred
poems were published during her lifetime.[2] The work that was published during her lifetime was
usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time.
Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically
lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[3]
Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to
her friends.

Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until
after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—
that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published
in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both
of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry
became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by
scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess
during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major
American poet.[4] arly influences and writing

When she was eighteen, Dickinson's family befriended a young attorney by the name of Benjamin
Franklin Newton. According to a letter written by Dickinson after Newton's death, he had been
"with my Father two years, before going to Worcester – in pursuing his studies, and was much in
our family."[35] Although their relationship was probably not romantic, Newton was a formative
influence and would become the second in a series of older men (after Humphrey) that Dickinson
referred to, variously, as her tutor, preceptor or master.[36]

Newton likely introduced her to the writings of William Wordsworth, and his gift to her of Ralph
Waldo Emerson's first book of collected poems had a liberating effect. She wrote later that he,
"whose name my Father's Law Student taught me, has touched the secret Spring".[37] Newton
held her in high regard, believing in and recognizing her as a poet. When he was dying of
tuberculosis, he wrote to her, saying that he would like to live until she achieved the greatness he
foresaw.[37] Biographers believe that Dickinson's statement of 1862—"When a little Girl, I had a
friend, who taught me Immortality – but venturing too near, himself – he never returned"—refers
to Newton.[38]

Dickinson was familiar not only with the Bible but also with contemporary popular literature.[39]
She was probably influenced by Lydia Maria Child's Letters from New York, another gift from
Newton[21] (after reading it, she gushed "This then is a book! And there are more of them!"[21]).
Her brother smuggled a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Kavanagh into the house for her
(because her father might disapprove)[40] and a friend lent her Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in
late 1849.[41] Jane Eyre's influence cannot be measured, but when Dickinson acquired her first
and only dog, a Newfoundland, she named him "Carlo" after the character St. John Rivers' dog.
[41] William Shakespeare was also a potent influence in her life. Referring to his plays, she wrote
to one friend "Why clasp any hand but this?" and to another, "Why is any other book
needed?"[42] Posies and poesies

Scholar Judith Farr notes that Dickinson, during her lifetime, "was known more widely as a
gardener, perhaps, than as a poet".[88] Dickinson studied botany from the age of nine and, along
with her sister, tended the garden at Homestead.[88] During her lifetime, she assembled a
collection of pressed plants in a sixty-six page leather-bound herbarium. It contained 424 pressed
flower specimens that she collected, classified, and labeled using the Linnaean system.[89] The
Homestead garden was well-known and admired locally in its time. It has not survived, and
Dickinson kept no garden notebooks or plant lists, but a clear impression can be formed from the
letters and recollections of friends and family. Her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, remembered
"carpets of lily-of-the-valley and pansies, platoons of sweetpeas, hyacinths, enough in May to
give all the bees of summer dyspepsia. There were ribbons of peony hedges and drifts of
daffodils in season, marigolds to distraction—-a butterfly utopia".[90] In particular, Dickinson
cultivated scented exotic flowers, writing that she "could inhabit the Spice Isles merely by
crossing the dining room to the conservatory, where the plants hang in baskets". Dickinson would
often send her friends bunches of flowers with verses attached, but "they valued the posy more
than the poetry".[90]