EMILY DICKINSON

EARLY LIFE / FAMILY

• She was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, a Calvinist town in Massachusetts
• She spent almost all of her life there
• She had an older brother, Austin, and a younger sister, Lavinia
• They were very close and all attended school in the one-room local primary school
• Her mother came from a wealthy family
• Her father was a lawyer, a politician and, later, the treasurer of Amherst College

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EDUCATION

• She received a good education at Amherst Academy which was a progressive school with a broad curriculum and well qualified teachers.
• The school had a connection with Amherst College whee students could attend lectures
• This scientific emphasis is reflected in he poetry
• At 17 she entered Mount Holyoke Seminary, a Christian boarding school
• Her stay there was not happy as she would not declare her faith in God
• Unhappy and homesick, she returned to Amherst

PERSONAL LIFE

• Dickinson declined many social calls unless to her close friends or siblings
• In 1855 she travelled to Washington to visit her father. From there she went to Philadelphia to visit a friend from school
• There she met a Presbyterian preacher, Charles Wadsworth - supposedly the great secret love of her life
• Her brother Austin married Susan Gilbert and lived in an adjoining house
• She spent many evenings in the company of the couple and their friends

PERSONAL LIFE CONTINUED

• When her mother's health began to decline, Emily and Lavinia ran the house
• Although only in her 20s, Dickinson began to withdraw from society, becoming a recluse and rarely leaving the house
• Relieved of visiting, she began to write poems and correspond with friends
• She was romantically involved with a family friend, Otis Lord, but she declined his marriage proposal in 1880

FINAL YEARS

• From 1882-1885, Dickinson lost her mother; her friends Otis Lord and Helen Hunt Jackson; and her young nephew, Gilbert
• Her brother had an affair with Mabel Loomis Todd and Emily was torn b/w him and Susan
• She suffered from kidney disease from 1884 until her death in 1886, aged 55
• She left specific instructions for her funeral, detailing what she should be dressed in and the route to be taken to the church

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• At her funeral service Thomas Wentworth Higginson read a line from her favourite Emily Brontë poem as her epitaph
• "No coward soul is mine"

NOTABLE WORKS INCLUDE:

• There is a certain slant of light
• I felt a funeral, in my brain
• A bird came down the walk
• I taste a liquor never brewed
• After great pain, a formal feeling comes