Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, daughter of a respected Amherst lawyer, Edward Dickinson, and his wife Emily Norcross Dickinson. She lived throughout her life in her father's house in Amherst, with her parents (until their deaths in her middle years) and younger sister Lavinia. Her brother William Austin Dickinson and his wife Susan Gilbert Dickinson lived next door.She was educated in local schools and at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley. Her childhood and girlhood were active and social, but after a trip to Washington and Philadelphia in 1855 she settled into a quiet pattern of life, never leaving Amherst except for two trips (for eye care) to Boston, seeing fewer and fewer people outside her close family circle and old friends, and drawing gradually into seclusion.
She died, after a two year illness, on May 15, 1886. Except for seven anonymous verses, her poems were unpublished during her lifetime. They were found after her death, and editions of sections of them have appeared over the years since then. A three volume variorum edition of her complete poems (totaling 1775), derived from all known manuscripts and edited by Thomas H. Johnson, was published in 1955 by Harvard University Press; the standard one volume edition of the complete poems, derived from the variorum edition and also edited by Mr. Johnson, was published in 1960 by Little, Brown and Company.
The best record of Emily Dickinson's appearance is in one of her letters to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to whom she had turned as a literary adviser: "I ... am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."
The picture to the right is the homestead of Emily Dickinson, where she spent most of her life. If you are interested in reading more information about the homestead, try The Emily Dickinson Homestead.