Emily Dickinson was a poet who wrote with a unique style for her era. Her interests, influences and personality set her off from the norm. Most of her influence on poetry occurred after she died; some consider her a founder of American poetry because she challenged the existing definition. Dickinson was independent, in a sense, at least considering her time period. She was so reclusive that few people knew who she really was. Her poetry helped identify her as a person.




Emily’s life started with her birth on December 10, 1830. She lived in Amherst, Massachusetts in a nice mansion with her parents, Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, and her siblings, William Austin and Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. The Dickinson Mansion was built by Samuel Fowler Dickinson, Emily’s parental grandfather, in 1813. At the same time, Amherst College, a school that Emily attended, was opened with Samuel Fowler Dickinson as the principle founder. William preferred to use his middle name Austin; later in Austin’s life, he became married to Susan Gilbert and he was a successful lawyer. Lavinia, like her sister, chose to stay close to home and never marry. She and her siblings had vastly different personalities which limited their intimacy. “If we had come up for the first time from two wells her astonishment would not be greater at some things I say” – Emily said of Lavinia. Edward Dickinson was a celebrated American politician; he served in the Senate, Congress and House of Representatives. Mrs. Dickinson, Emily’s mother, was very introverted. Emily’s life at home was strict and very religiously influenced which she denied. Sometimes, Emily felt as though her mother was discontent and distant from her children.


All of the Dickinson children attended Amherst Academy at some point in their lives. Lavinia and Emily schooled together at the ages of eight and ten. As a child, Emily seemed fragile and was often kept at home. Austin attended Amherst College. In the 1800’s, academies were for girls and colleges were for boys; both schools included all age groups. At Amherst Academy Emily enjoyed many subjects. She excelled in Arithmetic, Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Latin, Natural History, Philosophy, and Zoology; Botany inspired her to make a herbarium which she encouraged others to do. The information that she learned from these classes reflected in her poetry. At the coeducational Amherst Academy, her teachers and peers noticed her prodigious abilities in composition. She also was schooled for one year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary; she found the schools institutional tone disagreeable. Their strict rules, invasive religious practices, her own home sickness, and rebelliousness explain why she didn't return for a second year.




Just like the schools, her father enforced a strict religious structure. Emily grew up with a Calvinistic family and she was the only one who didn't experience the conversion. Calvinism is a belief that is based on the teachings of John Calvin and that stresses God’s power and the moral weakness of human beings. Dickinson seemed to believe in the soul’s immortality or at least to have transmuted it into a romantic quest for the transcendent and absolute. Her religious views avoid specification or classification because she took no interest in defining such ideas. Some might say that she believed in hermeticism, an ancient spiritual, philosophical, and magical tradition or a path of spiritual growth. The influences for her beliefs were from Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and mid-century tendencies of liberal protestant orthodoxy. This helped shaped her vocation as a poet.


Her development as a writer and a poet began in her late teens. The few poems that do exist from the beginning were burlesque “Valentines” and they were exuberantly inventive expressions of affection and esteem. These poems were sent to friends; a couple other poems were from the first half of the 1850’s. These poems drew a contrast between reality and Utopia. These poems, her known juvenilia[1], were almost always sent to friends. She did engage in plays of visionary fancies and this was encouraged by a book of essays, Reveries of a Bachelor: or a Book of the Heart by Ik Marvel; the pen name of Donald Grant Mitchell. This book was very sentimental to Dickinson. Emily’s essays, similar to Marvels, were more involved socially; her writing had a strong social incentive. Her writing seemed to unite the pleasures of solitary mental games, performance for audiences, and an intimate communication.


On the back of the book The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Rachel Wetzsteon, Dickinson’s style is described in a lot of detail. In this book the longest poem covers less than two pages and yet with such short poems she is considered as true inventor. “It is quality rather than quantity that matters” a quote by Lucius Annaeus Seneca applies to the size and style of Dickinson’s poems. She’s considered an inventor of American poetry because she used frequent punctuation and off rhymes. Her tone and frequent themes, abandonment, deny or reflecting on solitude, life, death, love, nature and society, charts the landscape of the human soul. She tended to experiment freely with conventional rhythm and meter, dashes and unusual metaphors. Her idiosyncratic style marked her as a true American poetic genius.


Her death is not to be forgotten. On May 15th,1886 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson died. She suffered for more than two and a half years with a condition called Bright’s disease which affects the kidneys. So many of her close friends died while she lived which affected her physically. The effect of these strains, the symptoms of severe headache and nausea mentioned in her letters, and her death bed coma punctuated by raspy and difficult breathing, have led researchers to conclude that she died of heart failure induced by severe hypertension, or high blood pressure. Emily Dickinson is buried in West Cemetery, Hampshire County, Amherst, Massachusetts.


Emily Dickinson the rebel poet, the girl who stood for her work, the girl who survived, the girl who stayed strong. She is a woman who knew what it was to try something new. She was the woman to change American poetry after her death. She challenged and changed the definition of American poetry. Who was she? A poetic genius.

[1] Works, especially writings, produced in one's youth.