Bio

Emily Dickinson was born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts to Edward and Emily Dickinson. She attended Amherst academy and proceeded to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary as well. Dickinson also had a brother: William Dickinson, and a half-sister: Lavinia Norcross Dickinson. Her father was a lawyer who studied at Yale and practiced in their hometown of Amherst. He also was a politician who was involved in the Whig party, he was also elected as a member of both the state legislature, the state senate, and a member of the U.S Congress as well. Her brother was also a lawyer, studying at Harvard and teamed up with his father, Edward at his law practice and eventually was his father's successor. William Austin went on to become the Treasurer of Amherst College and married one of Dickinson's closest friend: Susan Gilbert.

            Dickinson lived very much so in isolation for most if not all of her life. She never married and lived at home with her parents for most of her life, she served as the lead caretaker to her mother for around while she suffered from a severe illness until she died in the early 1880's. Her sister also never married and her and Emily never left the homestead until their deaths.

            Dickinson began her writing career when she was a teenager, and she was also writing poetry while she was serving as the caretaker for her mother, often filling notebooks filled with what she is the most well known for poems. During her life, she wrote thousands of poems but only a small amount of those were published while she was still alive. When she died in 1886, she left around 1,800 poems unpublished. After she died, her poems became published one after another beginning in the 1890's, with the first complete volume being released in 1955.