Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

One of the best loved American poets, Emily Elizabeth Dickinson wrote some of the most important poetry in the English language. Born on December 10 in Amherst, Massachusetts, she attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a year when she was seventeen. She returned to her hometown to live out her life within the confines of her family's home. Known in her time as "The Belle of Amherst," a woman mythologized for dressing all in white and sequestering herself in her room, Dickinson found freedom in seclusion, creating myths of her own with her startling and innovative poems. Her efforts give voice to the horrors of war to the magnitude of God. Though she published only eight of her poems anonymously during her lifetime, she left behind 1,775 poems that were published after her death.

Spartanburg, South Carolina · United States