Emily Dickinson

Just the Facts Born 1830 Amherst Massachusetts Her father was a lawyer who was friends with many of the influential people of the time. She had a brother Austin and a sister Lavinia She attended Amherst Academy for 6 years and Mount Holyoke Seminary for 1 year – this was a girl's boarding school and the longest amount of time she spent away from Amherst. As a child and a young adult she socialized regularly and had many assorted friends.

As she grew older she gradually withdrew, writing extensive letters to her friends but rarely seeing them. Eventually she reached the point where she would not leave her home and would not receive visitors. If her family had guests she would stay in her room. It is uncertain why she shied away, although multiple theories abound.

It is known that about the time she started to pull away she went on a trip with her father to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, presumably to avoid an “impossible love interest”. On that trip she met Charles Wadsworth who she quickly became close to. She considered him a muse and was distressed when he took an assignment in San Francisco.

After Wadsworth left, Dickinson began to write to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He became a teacher and a mentor. Dickinson published only a few poems in her lifetime— anonymously. After her death in 1886 her sister found over a thousand poems in her room. Edited by family and friends her poems began to be published. Eventually in 1955 an unedited copy of her works was published, rescuing her poems from “helpful hands”.