Emily Dickenson

Hello, my name is Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. I was born in Amherst Massachusetts in 1830. I was not very close with my mother and father. I had an older brother Austin who was kind of bossy, and a younger sister, Lavinia who was very protective of me because I was shy as a child. I attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary which was an institution of higher education in South Hadely. I only stayed at this school for one year because I did not like being away from home, also because I found the high rate of socialism in the school very difficult.

After this adventure I only traveled a couple times away from home, once to Washington D.C. After these trips I stayed at home to write and read, hardly ever leaving my home. I went through a period where I wore only white dresses, and stayed inside the house only going out to attend to my garden. Most of the things I wrote were letters to my family and friends.

I fell in love with many men over time, but never considered marriage. The one man that inspired me the most was named Reverend Charles Wadsworth. He was a supreme court judge. He inspired me to write many poems about love and passion. Later on my brother Austin married one of my closest friends, Susan Huntington. They moved next door to me, Susan and I wrote many letters back and forth. We became even closer than before. I spent a lot of my time with my family.

I lived during the Civil War and during Walt Whitman's most popular time. My poetry was filled with themes of loneliness, passion, intensity, they discussed my own life, and loves. I wrote most of poems in letters to my family and friends. I died in my hometown, Amherst Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886. Only eight of my poems were published during my lifetime. Most were published after my death from 1890 through 1955.

After I died, my sister was looking through my things and found almost nine hundred of my poems in a dresser drawer. Mabel Todd and