“All overgrown by cunning moss, (146)” was written to commemorate the death of Charlotte Brontë, and Dickinson requested that a poem by Emily Brontë be read at her own funeral.ĭickinson’s feelings about religion increasingly stood out. The Brontës in particular had a profound effect.
Her library included books by Longfellow, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Emerson as well as the Romantic poets, George Eliot, the Brontë sisters, and the Brownings. In “’Faith’ is fine invention (202)”, she declares, “‘Faith’ is a fine invention / For Gentlemen who see! /But Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency!”ĭickinson was also a passionate reader of contemporary poetry and prose from both the United States and England. In “‘Arcturus’ is his other name – (117)”, Dickinson, referring to the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere, writes, “I’d rather call him “Star”! / It’s very mean of Science / to go and interfere!” Other often-visited topics include medicine- “Surgeons must be very careful (156)”-and science. Planets and nature make frequent appearances in Dickinson’s poems, such as the night-blooming jessamines in “Come slowly – Eden! (205)”. This education would have a strong impact on her poetry. She began to collect flowers and keep them in a herbarium, which grew to 66 pages and 424 species. There she engaged in a science-heavy curriculum that included the study of botany, an interest that continued throughout her life. Between making frequent visits and house calls, she attended Amherst Academy, a school affiliated with Amherst College that opened to female students only two years prior to her arrival. Although Dickinson is often said to have been introverted and reclusive, her poems show both her internal struggles and her strong engagement with the natural and social worlds in which she lived.Ī daughter of a lawyer-politician father and a highly educated mother, Dickinson enjoyed a childhood of learning and socializing. A family feud led to dueling and competing volumes in subsequent years, and a complete, restored edition of Dickinson’s poetry did not appear until 1998, more than 100 years after the original publication.ĭespite their complicated history, Dickinson’s poems are among the most read and beloved in the English language. The first published book of Dickinson’s poetry appeared in 1890, four years after her death it was a small selection, heavily edited to remove Dickinson’s unique syntax, spelling, and punctuation.
Emily Dickinson published very few poems in her lifetime, and nearly 1,800 of her poems were discovered after her death, many of them neatly organized into small, hand-sewn booklets called fascicles.
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