1. Emily Dickinson
The Belle of Amherst

2. This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me,-- The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me!

3. Biography Born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, MA.
Educated at Amherst Academy.
At 17, began college at Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary; she
became ill the spring of her first
year and did not return.
She would leave home only for
short trips for the remainder of her life,
leading scholars to speculate she may
have been agoraphobic.

4. Dickinson in Love? The Master Letters Samuel Bowles Susan Gilbert
Unknown man
Samuel Bowles
Dickinson’s editor
Susan Gilbert
Dickinson’s sister-in-law

5. Was She Weird?
Known for being a recluse, she didn’t leave her family’s homestead for any reason after the late 1860’s.
She almost always wore white.
She often lowered snacks and treats in baskets to neighborhood children from her window, careful never to let them see her face.

6. Dickinson’s Poetry
Regular meter—hymn meter and ballad meter, also known as Common meter
Quatrains
Alternating tetrameter and trimeter
Often 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, 2nd and 4th lines rhyme in iambic pentameter
The use of dashes
Influenced by nature and spiritual themes

7. Dickinson’s Publishing Career
Sent poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic and family friend.
He recognized her talent, but tried to “improve” them, which made Dickinson lose interest.
At the time of her death, only seven of her poems had been published.

8. Posthumous Publication
After her death, her poems were heavily edited and published by Higginson and friend Mabel Loomis Todd.
Thomas Johnson produced a collection of Dickinson’s more than 1700 poems in three volumes in 1955; he restored her original capitalization and punctuation.

9. Dickinson’s Legacy
Dickinson died May 15, 1886 of nephritis (kidney disease).
Dickinson is considered influential to poets such as Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Archibald MacLeish, and William Stafford.
Along with Walt Whitman, Dickinson is one of the two giants of American poetry of the 19th century.