Emily Dickinson Research Papers

Emily Dickinson might be called an artisan, since most of her poems have fewer than thirty lines, yet she deals with the most deep topics in poetry: death, love, and humanity’s relations to God and nature. Her poetry not only impresses by its on going freshness but also the animation. Her use of language and approachness of her subjects in unique ways, might attribute to why “Hope is the thing with feathers” is one of her most famous works.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Born to Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson, she was the second of three children. Her brother was named Austin, and her sister was named Lavina. Her father, Edward, was a Whig lawyer, who served as treasurer
The religious faith that resided in the Dickinson household was one called evangelical Calvinism. Evangelical Calvinism is a belief that humans are born totally depraved and can be saved only if they undergo a life-altering conversion, in which they accept the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Habegger n.p.). Neither Emily nor Lavina married; however, when Austin married, him and his wife lived next door to his parents. Emily Dickinson excelled in subjects such as Latin and the sciences. After determining that Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (the college she was going to at the time and is now Mount Holyoke College) was uncongenial, she left the college. Her writing mostly consisted of letters until she was in her mid-20s. The poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson was the first poetry Emily Dickinson had the pleasure to be introduced to by one of her father’s law students, Benjamin F. Newton. The works of Elizabeth Barret Browning played a formative role for Emily, confirming the idea of female greatness and stimulating her ambition. Restricting social activity, she cultivated epistolary relationships with a few people. In 1855, Edward, Lavina, and
One poem, A Valentine, was in the Amherst College Indicator in February 1850. Another Valentine was published in the Springfield Republican newspaper in February 1852. Various times throughout the 1860s, Republican would print four or more of her poems, out of the nearly forty poems she sent to Samuel Bowles, one of the papers editors. Among the four were three of her most famous works: I taste a liquor never brewed, Safe in their Alabaster Chambers, and A narrow Fellow in the Grass. Another poem was published in 1866 in a New York journal called The Round Table. Success is counted Sweetest was the last poem published which was in 1978. Over her entire lifetime, Emily Dickinson only published eight of the 1,775 poems she is known to have written. Emily Dickinson died May 15, 1886. After her death, Lavina found manuscripts of her sisters poems and looked to Mabel Loomis Todd for help in the publication. Much poetry still unpublished, a quarrel over real estate led to an estrangement, both in possession of a portion of the manuscripts. The love affair between Mabel Loomis Todd and Austin, Dickinson’s brother, not only affected the families of both but also the posthumous editing and publishing of Emily’s poetry (Pearson