Emily DickinsonDecember 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson• Born December 10, 1830; lived almost all of

her life in her family's house in Amherst, MA

• 1840, Emily was educated at the nearby Amherst Academy

•She studied English and classical literature, and Latin; also was taught in other subjects including religion, history, mathematics, geology, and biology.

• In 1847, at 17, Dickinson began attending Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary ( Mount Holyoke College)

•Returned home after less than a year at the Seminary, and she did not return to the school. Some speculate that she was homesick, however there is also speculation that she refused to sign an oath stating she would devote her life to Jesus Christ

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson• Recluse? After Holyoke, she left home only

for short trips to visit nearby relatives. Always wore white.

• Ten poems published during life

• Relationships? Wrote “passionate” poetry•“Master”

•Sister-in-law Susan Gilbert

• Dickinson died on May 15, 1886 of a kidney disease

• After her death, her family found 40 hand-bound volumes containing more than 1,700 of her poems.

Some Quotes…

“Heaven is what I cannot reach!”

“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--Success in Circuit lies.”

“I dwell in Possibility.”

“Water, is taught by thirst”

“Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed,”

Dickinson & Transcendentalism

[L]ike not a few Transcendentalists, she might have written on the lintels of her door-post, Whim. That was her guiding divinity, Whim in a high sense: not unruliness, for all her impishness, but complete subjection to the inner dictate. She obeyed it in her mode of life, in her friendships, in her letters, in her poems. It makes her poetry eminently spontaneous—as fresh and artless as experience itself….

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

Dickinson & Puritanism

The inwardness and moral ruggedness of Puritanism she inherited mainly through her father, Edward Dickinson, lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, a Puritan of the old type, whose heart, according to his daughter, was “pure and terrible.”

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

Dickinson & Puritanism

There is no better example of the New England tendency to moral revery than this last pale Indian-summer flower of Puritanism. She is said literally to have spent years without passing the doorstep, and many more years without leaving her father’s grounds. After the death of her parents, not to mention her dog Carlo, she retired still further within herself…

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

Something to Do•Draw a graveyard with at least 6 gravestones. (2-3 minutes)

•Browse through the book and collect 6 poems relating to death

•On one line of each grave marker, write the first line and page # of the poem

•On another line, write a tiny, thoughtful synopsis (summary) of the narrator’s attitude toward death

RIPRIP“I never hear the

word “escape” (p.1)

∞ ∞ ∞The narrator gets really excited by

stories of escape and wishes he/she could

escape…from life(?)