Emily Dickinson Overview

The nineteenth century was a literary age characterized by Realism in prose and Romanticism in poetry. If the poems of Emily Dickinson had been published during her lifetime, however,things might have been very different. Dickinson's work is full of revolutionary impulses,... [more]

The nineteenth century was a literary age characterized by Realism in prose and Romanticism in poetry. If the poems of Emily Dickinson had been published during her lifetime, however,things might have been very different. Dickinson's work is full of revolutionary impulses, despite her reclusive lifestyle. Her lucid, often unrhymed lines and colloquial language seem contemporary, while her revelation of the sublime in small-scale, personal moments seems timeless. The willful Dickinson refused to change her writing style or lifestyle to suit the fancies of others, and was ultimately driven into solitude. After one unhappy year at the Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women, Dickinson returned to her parents' home in Amherst and almost never left again. Extremely critical of her own first efforts at writing, Dickinson was encouraged by her few trusted associates -- her sister-in-law Susan, who also had literary leanings, and Benjamin Newton, a young law clerk in her father's office who introduced Dickinson to Transcendentalism. Newton died in 1853, depriving the poet of her one potential soulmate. Others were not allowed to penetrate her intensely private world or to read her poetry. At her death, her family was surprised to discover over 1000 poems packed at the back of a bureau. Despite explicit instructions in Dickinson's will to burn all her papers, her sister Lavinia published a collection of 114 pieces in 1890. It was several decades before Dickinson's entire oeuvre was made available to the public. Her poetry condenses the world into brief, illuminating lines that seem to burn away the details of quotidian life. The small compass of a garden or a room can contain an encounter with hope or death; the intimacy of homespun language meets the towering concepts of religion and philosophy. In her isolation, Dickinson saw through the institutions and rhetoric of her day, and prophesied the century to come. [show less]