Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Amherst, Massachusetts, United States

A word is dead when it is said, some say, I say it just begins to live that day.
- Emily Dickinson, "A word is dead."

The life of Emily Dickinson has intrigued individuals for decades. Dickinson seldom left her residency and whenever she had encounters with people, they impacted her thoughts and poetry immensely. One in particular was Reverend Charles Wordsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. Dickinson deeply admired Wordsworth and after a brief visit of Wordsworth to her home in 1860, she began to write heartsick poetry. In the 1860s, Emily lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world and her sense of alienation was a common motif in her poems. Metaphysics of England of the 1600s enthralled Dickinson along with her Puritan background. Dickinson admired poets such as Robert, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Keats. Both Dickinson and Whitman, although differing in styles, share a unique American anthem. Dickinson used strict iambic meters, employed both rhyme and slant rhyming schemes, used unconventional grammar and spelling, and never titled her work. She would write poetry in little strips of paper, curl them up, and stick them in odd places such as door hinges or gaps in the wall of her bedroom. She tried publishing her poetry once, yet canceled on the idea; she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, but she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously.

Works
Poetry
Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)
Poems: Second Series (1891)
Poems: Third Series (1896)
The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (1914)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1924)
Further Poems of Emily Dickinson: Withheld from Publication by Her Sister Lavinia (1929)
Unpublished Poems of Emily Dickinson (1935)
Bolts of Melody: New Poems of Emily Dickinson (1945)
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems (1962)
Prose
Letters of Emily Dickinson (1894)
Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters with Notes and Reminisces (1932)

Additional Information
Online Literary Criticism of Emily Dickinson's Work:
http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?au=dic-61

Sources:
Campbell, D. Homepage. March 31, 2001 http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl311/dickinson.htm

"Emily Dickinson." The Academy of American Poets. 2001. http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=156