Poet, lived in Amherst, Massachusetts
Emily Dickinson, whose odd and inventive poems helped to initiate modern poetry, is an enigma, a mystery, a paradox.
Only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime. We know of her work only because her sister and two of her long-time friends brought them to public attention.
Most of the poems we have were written in just six years, between 1858 and 1864. She bound them into small volumes she called fascicles, and forty of these were found in her room at her death.
She also shared poems with friends in letters. From the few drafts of letters that were not destroyed, at her instruction, when she died, it's apparent that she worked on each letter as a piece of artwork in itself, often picking phrases that she'd used years before. Sometimes she changed little, sometimes she changed a lot.
It's hard to even tell for sure what "a poem" by Dickinson really "is," because she changed and edited and reworked so many, writing them differently to different correspondents.
In the following articles, you'll find some of the key details about Emily Dickinson's life, the correspondence that helped bring her poems (eventually) to public attention, and the editing of her work after her death. You'll also find on this site handy lists of currently-available books about Emily Dickinson: Emily Dickinson poetry and letters, and Emily Dickinson biographies and literary criticism, and some links for web resources on Emily Dickinson.
