Emily Dickinson - Biography, Height, Weight, Age, Boyfriend, Husband, Family, Career, Life Story & More
Name Emily
Dickinson
Born 10
December 1830, Amherst,
Massachusetts,
United States
Died 15
May 1886 (age 55 years), Amherst,
Massachusetts,
United States
Influenced
by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning,
William
Blake, Thomas Carlyle
Emily Dickinson Education
Education Mount
Holyoke College (1847–1848),
Amherst
Academy (1840–1847)
Emily Dickinson Family
Parents Edward Dickinson
Emily
Norcross Dickinson
American poet Emily Dickinson was born on December 10,
1830, and is renowned for her unorthodox works. She spent a year at South
Hadley's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She rarely left her house during her
lifetime, and she didn't have many guests. Her story was greatly influenced by
the people she was connected to. She met Philadelphia priest Reverend Charles
Wadsworth during her first tour there in 1854, and it is said that he served as
the inspiration for many of her writings.
The early years and Schooling of Emily
Dickinson
Born on December 10, 1830, Emily Dickinson came from a well-read, well-liked,
and dignified family in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her parents, Edward Dickinson
and Emily Norcross Dickinson, had her as the middle child. The famous Amherst
College was owned by her grandpa, Samuel Dickinson. Her mother, Emily Norcross
Dickinson, was very interested in gardening and housekeeping, while her father,
Edward Dickinson, was an American politician, lawyer, and trustee of Amherst
College.
Emily Dickinson grew up on their homestead with her
devoted parents and two siblings, William Austin and Lavin Norcross. In 1833,
Emily's family relocated to Pleasant Street in Amherst following the birth of
her younger sister, Lavina. Emily showed herself to be a brilliant and
committed student even as a young child. She was able to support her students
by producing a variety of fresh, rhythmic stories thanks to her keen thinking.
From 1840 to 1847, Emily Dickinson attended Amherst
Academy. Following her education, she enrolled in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary
(now Mount Holyoke College) in 1847 at the age of 17. She was able to study a
variety of disciplines at the Seminary, including English literature and Latin,
throughout her nearly year-long stay. Her poor health, however, prevented her
from pursuing her education for very long. Her father asked her to leave
college and bring her home after she started coughing constantly. She so
graduated from college without obtaining a formal degree, but she was able to
increase her vocabulary and understanding.
Emily Dickinson’s Literary Revelation and
Work
Emily was a talented musician and a sought-after artist. She liked to bring out
the parallels between singing and poetry when she was a college student. Emily
also had an excellent sense of aesthetics; her love of dark colors and visual
reality are evident in many of her poetry.
Benjamin Franklin Newton, one of Emily's father's students, introduced her to
Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetry. Newton was familiar with modern literature as a
young law student. He was the first to urge Emily to create poetry after recognizing
her lyrical potential. Dickinson found that the works of other well-known
poets, particularly Emerson, were important in expanding the spiritual concepts
beyond dogmatic Calvinism.
Emerson and other well-known poets were crucial in
encouraging Emily to come forward because, despite her innovative ideas and
unconventional thinking, she frequently doubted her own beliefs. Newton also
sent Emily a set of Emerson books, which she said were meant to "touch a
secret spring," to help her develop her literary abilities. She could read
anything from "The Holy Bible" to modern literature at the age of
twenty. Additionally, she penned a message to his brother, expressing her wish
to write.
She helped her mother with sewing, cleaning, and
entertaining after returning home from college, where she learnt a lot of
household skills. Emily was described as a lovely girl with bright eyes and a
musical talent.
Emily Dickinson’s Work Manuscript
Because so few of Dickinson's poems were published during her lifetime, editors
and academics of her writing did all in their power to alter her handwritten
manuscripts and letters in order to gain a deeper comprehension of the poet's
creative process and connection to her work. Dickinson's manuscripts showed
significant variances. She frequently introduced many versions of poetry and
left a variety of word choices in the margins. This demonstrates Emily's lack
of desire to present a definitive version of each of her poems.
Nevertheless, American authors and editors Thomas
Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd edited her poetry to make them widely
known since they believed that this was crucial for readers in the nineteenth
century. Todd and Higginson took Dickinson's manuscripts and paraphrased them,
then organized the poems into several groupings, modified the terminology,
eliminated certain stanzas, and regularized capitalization and punctuation. Todd
and Higginson added titles to Dickinson's poems, but Dickinson herself did not.
Dickinson arranged several of her manuscripts into compact, hand-folded
booklets, which her early editors referred to as "fascicles," and she
sent several poems to her close friends. Because Dickinson's poems have
survived in a variety of forms, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
determine which are the "true" versions of each of her works.
Dickinson's First Poem Was Published When?
Dickinson was a prolific private poet, yet just 10 of her 1,800 poems were
published during her lifetime. Dickinson's poems published during her lifetime
were substantially altered by the publishers to conform to the accepted poetic
conventions of the day. For the era in which she wrote, her poetry are
exceptional. Emily frequently employs slant rhyme, unusual capitalization, and
punctuation in her poems, which typically include few lines without titles.
Death and immortality were major themes in several of her Dickinson poetry.
Dickinson's literary abilities were not well known
among her acquaintances. Furthermore, Dickinson's writing abilities were not
made public until her younger sister Lavinia found her poetry collections in
her bedroom after her death in 1886. Both Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas
Wentworth Higginson were heavily involved in the editing of Dickinson's first
collection of poems, which was released in 1890.
According to the 1998 New York Times story, the name
"Susan" was frequently purposefully omitted from the numerous
revisions made by editors. Dickinson dedicated nearly eleven of her poems to
her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson; however, Todd, most
likely, destroyed all of the dedications. When academic Thomas H. Johnson
released "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" in 1955, Dickinson's whole
and unaltered collection of poetry was first made public.
Emily Dickinson's Spouse
Emily Dickinson had no husband and never married. She developed a tight bond
with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, and many other intimate
friendships, confidants, and mentors. Although there has been a lot of
conjecture regarding Dickinson's romantic life, especially in relation to her
letters and poetry, no biographer has been able to conclusively identify the
object of her affections.
Emily Dickinson’s Editions
R.W. Franklin's three-volume variorum edition, The Poems of Emily Dickinson:
Variorum Edition (1998), is the authoritative edition of the poems.
Additionally, he edited The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (1981), a
two-volume collection that includes facsimiles of the poems in their original
sequence. Edited by Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin, The Gorgeous Nothings
(2013) features facsimiles of Dickinson's so-called envelope poems, which were
composed on oddly shaped scraps of paper. The canonical source for Emily
Dickinson's letters is still The Letters of Emily Dickinson, which was
reprinted in a single book in 1986 after being edited in three volumes by
Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward in 1958. Emily Dickinson's letters to her
sister-in-law are collected in Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate
Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (1998), which was edited by Ellen Louise
Hart and Martha Nell Smith. Emily Dickinson's Open Folios: Scenes of Reading,
Surfaces of Writing (1995), edited by Marta L. Werner, and The Master Letters
of Emily Dickinson (1986), edited by R.W. Franklin, both include facsimiles of
the letters to "Master" and Otis Phillips Lord. All known reviews
from the first ten years of publication are reprinted in Emily Dickinson's
Reception in the 1890s: A Documentary History (1989), edited by Willis J.
Buckingham. Dickinson documents from Harvard University and Amherst College are
posted online.
Emily Dickinson’s Top 10 Poems
Year Title
1861 Wild Nights
Wild Nights
1890 Knows How
To Forget
1890 Luck Is Not
Chance
1890 Like Brooms
Of Steel
1890 One Day Is
There of Series
1890 Hope Is The
Things With Feathers
1890 Dear March
- Come In
1890 I’m Nobody!
Who Are You?
1951 I Measure
Every Grief I Meet
Death of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson passed away in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886, at the
age of 55, following a protracted illness. Dickinson's death certificate states
that she passed away from Bright's disease, an inflammatory kidney condition.
However, according to her recent studies on her symptoms and treatment, the
author has truly had a brain haemorrhage or heart failure as a result of high
blood pressure.
According to her letters, the poet was experiencing
excruciating migraines and illness, and as a final resort, she attempted to
breathe after going into a coma. Dickinson, who passed away at the age of 55,
was likewise shown to be well prepared for her demise. The poet gave detailed
instructions for her funeral before she passed away, including choices for her
attire, casket, and even a path for the mourners to follow.
In summary, little is known about the life of the shy American poet Emily
Dickinson. Despite her lack of popularity during her lifetime, she is now
regarded as one of the most significant figures in American poetry.