Emily Dickinson would never have known she is a hero to so many people today as she was unrecognized in her own time. In poetry, she is known for her innovative use of form and syntax. Despite it being unusual at the time for a woman to read and write professionally, Emily pursued her passion deeply. Emily expressed her feeling differently than other poets and influenced the way we write today. She wrote about love, and individuality in a timeless way that resonates with many people.
She lived a quiet life on a homestead in Massachusetts where she secretly created bundles of poetry and wrote hundreds of letters. After Emily’s death in 1886, her sister, Lavinia Dickinson discovered hundreds of poems that Emily had crafted over the years. The first volume of these works was published in 1890. A full compilation, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, wasn’t published until 1955, though previous iterations had been released.
Dickinson’s seclusion during her later years has been the object of much speculation. Scholars have thought that she suffered from conditions such as agoraphobia, depression and/or anxiety. Dickinson was also treated for a painful ailment of her eyes. After the mid-1860s, she rarely left the confines of the Homestead. It was also around this time, from the late 1850s to mid-’60s, that Dickinson was most productive as a poet, creating small bundles of verse known as fascicles without any awareness on the part of her family members.
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