Emily Dickinson- Short Biography
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the family’s homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family. Her father, Edward Dickinson was a lawyer in Amherst and a trustee of Amherst College. Two hundred years earlier, her patrilineal ancestors had arrived in the New World—in the Puritan Great Migration—where they prospered.Emily Dickinson’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College
Dickinson spent seven years at the Academy, taking classes in English and classical literature, Latin, botany, geology, history, “mental philosophy,” and arithmetic. Daniel Taggart Fiske, the school’s principal at the time, would later recall that Dickinson was “very bright” and “an excellent scholar, of exemplary deportment, faithful in all school duties”.
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. In direct opposition to the immense productivity that she displayed in the early 1860s, Dickinson wrote fewer poems in 1866. Beset with personal loss as well as loss of domestic help, Dickinson may have been too overcome to keep up her previous level of writing.
Although she continued to write in her last years, Dickinson stopped editing and organizing her poems. She also exacted a promise from her sister Lavinia to burn her papers. Lavinia, who never married, remained at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.
Emily Dickinson- Short Biography |
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Birth Name | Emily Dickinson |
Born | December 10, 1830 |
Birth Place | Amherst, Massachusetts, United States |
Education | Amherst Academy (1840–1847), Mount Holyoke College |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Poet |
Parents | Edward Dickinson |
Known for | Poet |
Spouse | – |
Alma mater | Mount Holyoke Female Seminary |
Notable Awards | Emily Dickinson won no literary awards during her lifetime |
Children | Ned, Martha, and Thomas Gilbert (“Gib”) |
Notable works | List of Emily Dickinson poems |
Language | English |
Genre | classical |
Books | The complete poems, Because I could not stop for Death, MORE |
Period | 1858-1865 |
Died | May 15, 1886 |
Place of death | Amherst, Massachusetts, United States |
Literary movement | – |
Cause of death | Bright’s disease and its duration as two and a half years |
Related facts and data | 11 Poetic Facts about Emily Dickinson |