Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was the reclusive American poet who lived from 1830 to 1886, and wrote a treasure trove of poetry in her life, much of which centered on death and its consequence, immortality. The complete and unaltered collection of her poems was not published until 1955, almost a century after her death, and it established her as a major American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to an impeccable strain of Puritan settlers, one of whom founded Amherst College, her early life was one of privilege and conventionality. But she was always strongly affected by the deaths (often untimely) of friends and relatives. As she grew older, she spent most of her time at home, caring for her ailing mother and attending to household duties, while indulging in a passion for horticulture and herbariums. In 1858 she began revising and collecting her poetry, amassing over 800 pieces. By the 1860s, she had become a virtual recluse, suffering from what the physicians of the time termed “nervous prostrationâ€, but which many modern day scholars believe to have been agoraphobia. She began to be truly reclusive, speaking to visitors from behind a door, and conducting her social life largely through correspondence. In 1874, when her father died, Emily did not attend the funeral. Whatever her reasons, Emily Dickinson chose seclusion as her companion and poetry as her legacy. When she died at the age of 55, the poem read at her own funeral was that of another, equally individualistic, Emily – Emily Brontë – “No Coward Soul is Mineâ€.
