Emily Dickinson

American, 1830–1886

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems but published fewer than a dozen during her lifetime. Living in near-total seclusion in Amherst, Massachusetts, she developed a radical poetic style — compressed, elliptical, punctuated by dashes — that was decades ahead of its time. Her subjects include death, immortality, nature, love, and the interior life of the mind. After her death, her sister discovered her vast body of work, and its posthumous publication revealed one of the most original and powerful voices in the history of English-language poetry.