Early Life
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830, the second of three children of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. At a young age, Dickinson was highly imaginative and showed signs of being a potential writer. After attending the Amherst Academy, she went to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She left after one year, preferring to stay at home with her family rather than with her peers. It was during these years living with her family that she was exposed to different forms of literature, particularly poetry, and developed her love for language.
Influencing Factors
Though Emily Dickinson was an eccentric and solitary figure, she did experience relationships with certain people and in turn many of them had a great impact on her writing. One of the most influential people in her life was her brother Austin, who was closest to her in age. Austin was the one to introduce Emily to the works of the British Romantic Poets such as William Wordsworth, S.T.Coleridge, George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Emily was immediately drawn to this style of writing and its influential power on her own works can be seen throughout her many poems.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
In 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote an anonymous letter to a famous author and critic, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asking his advice on her writing. Higginson went on to help Dickinson with her writing but also encouraged her to read more widely, particularly women poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. It is possible that it was through Higginson’s influence that Dickinson began to explore more experimental forms of writing, particularly Imagism.
The Brownings
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning were both immensely popular in Dickinson’s time and proved to be great influences for her writing. Dickinson took Barrett Browning’s lead in exploring different kinds of imagery and their unique ways of representing inner truths and emotions. Dickinson found great admiration in Robert Browning’s work and also wrote a poem dedicated to him. In her poem, Dickinson wrote of her own feelings of envy towards the Brownings’ relationship and seemed to be seeking a warmer connection with someone in her life.
Theology
As a deeply religious and spiritual person, Dickinson turned to religious themes to explore her own ideas of mortality, love, and death. Her religious views were heavily shaped by her father, who was a powerful figure in the religious community in Amherst. Dickinson was also greatly influenced by the works of philosophers such as Emanuel Swedenborg and William Ellery Channing, whose writings focused on the pursuit of spiritual truth. Dickinson used their ideas of eternity, infinity and spirituality to explore her own ideas and express her thoughts through her poetry.
A Reclusive Life
Despite the influence of some of the most important people in Emily Dickinson’s life, she remained largely a reclusive figure, rarely leaving the family home where she spent most of her life. This seclusion allowed Dickinson to explore her own thoughts and feelings, free from any external influence. In the end, hers was a unique voice that was deeply personal and trusting of her own judgement. It was through her exploration of the soul and the mysteries of life and death that Dickinson found her most powerful poetic voice.
Confirmed Poet
Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems, many of them unpublished during her lifetime. Her work found fame posthumously and is now considered some of the most powerful and beloved poetry ever created. Her work has had a lasting influence on literature and poetry, with the particular style of her poetry often being associated with the Transcendentalist movement. Dickinson is now regarded as one of the greatest American poets, a recognition she did not achieve in life but will forever be remembered for in death.
Posthumous Publication
After Dickinson’s death in 1886, her work began to be published and it soon became clear that she was a powerful and unique voice. Dickinson’s sister Lavinia discovered her sister’s cache of poems and began to publish them in 1890. This was followed by the publication of The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, which included the poems in their original form, free from editorial intervention. This further exposed Dickinson to a wider audience and cemented her legacy as one of the most important poets of the 19th century.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Dickinson drew great inspiration from the Transcendentalists; a philosophical and poetic movement of the 19th century. Their emphasis on the power of the individual and nature was hugely influential in Dickinson’s writing and many of her poems reflect the ideas present in Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the leading figures of this movement and it is possible to see his powerful influence in many of Dickinson’s most powerful poems. In her works, Dickinson analyzed the world around her as if through a microscope, finding beauty in the most simple of observations.
Themes in Writing
The themes of Emily Dickinson’s poems vary considerably, ranging from nature, love and death, to deeper theological topics and the search for spiritual truth. Her use of imagery and symbolism lends her poems a meditative quality and an intimacy that is rarely seen in other writers. She frequently used nature to explore these ideas and her works often feature birds, flowers, and plants as metaphors for life, death, and love. Her writing is highly personal and often charged with emotion, with many of her poems first emerging as untitled verses.
Public Reception
Emily Dickinson’s works were almost immediately popular among the literary community and readers alike. Her fame spread and soon she had admirers from all over the world. Academics and literary critics have also generally been positive about her works, praising her for her innovative use of language and her unique poetic style. Her works have been adapted for theater, film and television, further contributing to her legacy as one of the most important poets of the 19th century.
