Emily Dickinson Biography and Quotes

Birthday: December 10th, 1830
Commemoration: May 15th, 1886
Nationality: American

55

Years Old

Famously Known For

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was a prolific poet, and she wrote more than 1800 poems during her lifetime and after her death, her sister had a larger cache of her works that had not been made public.

Early Life

Emily was born at a family’s homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts is a not so wealthy family but prominent. Her father was into the law profession. She was a well-behaved girl, and she liked music and loved to play the piano.

She attended her junior school in a building on a pleasant street. Her education was classical for a Victorian girl, and her father wanted his children to be well educated. Emily’s father was warm, but her mom was kind of cold and aloof.

In 1840 September 7 she and sister joined Amherst Academy, a former boy’s school that was open for girls also. She studied classical literature, geology, botany and history at the academy. Her principal describes her as bright and excellent scholar although sickly she was faithful to her school duties and enjoyed her studies.

Personal Life

Emily met Charles Wadsworth in Philadelphia who was a minister and became friends until her death in 1882.

Career

When Emily was Eighteen, her family befriended an attorney by the name Newton. Newton was among the significant male influence to her as a tutor, master, and preceptor. She was introduced to William Wordsworth writing by Newton, and he gifted her Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first book of poems, and they were not romantically involved at all.

She loved reading the bible and was influenced by contemporary popular literature, especially Lydia Maria child’s letters from New York given by Newton.

Deaths from closer people to her and her mother chronic illness slowed her a little bit, but she continued writing.