Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived a quiet life and wrote short, powerful poems about death, nature, love, and the soul.
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Many things shaped Emily’s poetry. She read poems by the Metaphysical poets from England and found meaning in the ‘Book of Revelation’. She grew up in a Puritan New England town where people adhered to strict Christian principles. She enjoyed the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. People told her not to read Walt Whitman’s poems because they thought those poems were disgraceful, but today both Dickinson and Whitman are considered founders of American poetry.
Emily wrote many poems, often sending them to friends inside letters, but she remained unknown during her lifetime. The first book of her poetry was published posthumously in 1890, and the last one was released in 1955. Emily died in Amherst in 1886. After her death, her family discovered forty small books, known as “fascicles,” containing nearly 1,800 poems.
Emily made these books herself by folding and sewing sheets of paper together and copying her poems. She used different kinds of dashes in her writing, some short, some long, some even standing up. When her poems were first printed, editors changed them and removed her special marks. Later, editors tried to show her marks using the en-dash.
The proper order of her poems was not known until 1981, when a scholar named Ralph W. Franklin studied the pages to reassemble the poems in the way Emily had grouped them. Franklin’s work showed that the poems in each fascicle go together in theme, not just in time or by accident. The only book that keeps Emily’s original order is ‘The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson’, published in 1981.
“Biography.” Emily Dickinson Museum, https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/biography/.
Sewall, Richard B. The Life of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. Modern Library, 2002.
Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan is a teacher, bilingual writer and artist with over two decades of experience in teaching English language and literature. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at NSS College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Her blog, ashlit.in brings together academic resources, creative writing in Malayalam and English, and visual art. The platform features lecture notes, study materials, poems, reflections, short prose, and a curated collection of her paintings. Through this space, she seeks to foster learning, creativity, and meaningful engagement with literature and the arts.
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