The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
Dickinson, Emily
Elizabeth
(
1830
–
86
), American poet, born in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of a successful lawyer. She was educated at Amherst Academy (
1834
–
47
) and Mount Holyoake (
1847
–
8
); during her early years she was lively, witty, and sociable, but from her mid-twenties she gradually withdrew into an inner world, eventually, in her forties, refusing to leave her home, and avoiding all contact with strangers, although she maintained intimate correspondences with people she never saw face to face. Her emotional life remains mysterious, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair, for which one candidate is the
Revd
Charles
Wadsworth
, with whom she corresponded and who twice visited her; another is
Samuel
Bowles
, editor of the Springfield Republican, to whom she sent and addressed many poems. She wrote poetry from girlhood onward, but only seven poems out of...
[The entire page is 367 words long]
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