Emily Dickinson Biography

1848: Back home, after having left the college,Emily started to write her first poems.

1855: Emily and her sister spent time in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1855: Her father bought the Main Street home where she was born.

1856: Austin Dickinson, her brother, successful Harvard Graduate and Amherst lawyer, married Susan Gilbert, Emily's best friend. Moved in their house The Evergreens. They entertained many guests such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican.

1862: Dickinson answered a call for poetry submissions in the Atlantic Monthly. (she corresponded with its editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

1864/1865: Stayed with her cousins the Norcross in Boston. She saw an eye doctor. She was forbidden to read and write. First and last time she went away from Amherst.

1870: Her mother was sick. She and her sister Lavinia cared for her.

1874: Her father died suddenly.

1878: Samuel Bowles, her friend, died.

1882: Charles Wadsworth, a friend too,died.

1883: Gilbert, the son of her brother Austin, died.

Dickinson herself was afflicted with her own illness (kidneys, Bright's Disease, chronic pain and edema).

1886, May 15 :She died at the age of fifty-six. She rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. She did not wish a church service. She was buried in one of her white dress with some violets pinned to her collar by her sister Lavinia.

1914: Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily's niece published another of the many collections to follow.

1955: Thomas H.Johnson published the first comprehensive collection of her poems in three volumes.

1958: Thomas H. Johnson's "The Letters of Emily Dickinson" .

This Is My Letter To The World

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

Not only was she known for her poetry, but for her quotations as well, like:
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Emily Dickinson

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.
Emily Dickinson

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
Emily Dickinson