Emily Dickinson
(1830 - 1886 )

Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886) rarely left her birthplace of Amhearst Massachusetts.  She lived her life as an unknown poet except to her family and a few friends.  That is particularly unusual, because during her lifetime she wrote almost eighteen hundred exquisite short poems that are now regarded as one of the great expressions of America genius.

She was the bright daughter of a well-to-do religious family; her father was a lawyer.  As a girl at boarding school, she seemed high-spirited and happy.  But something happened when she was a young woman (a love that was not, or could not be requited, biographers speculate), and at thirty-one, she simply withdrew from the world.  She dressed all in white, refused to leave her home or to meet strangers, and devoted her life to her family - and to writing poetry.  Of her own poetry, she wrote, "This is my letter to the World/That never wrote to Me..."  

She wrote her poems on little pieces of paper, tied them in neat packets, and occasionally gave them to relatives as valentines or birthday greetings or attached them to gifts of cookie or pies.  In 1862, she sent four poems to the editor of Atlantic Monthly.  Only seven of her poems were published (anonymously) during her lifetime.  When she died at fifty-six, she had no notion that one day she would be honored as one of America's greatest poems.  

Open "Elements of Literature, Fourth Course" to Page 569 and read "Heart! We will forget him!"  

Grade Page