Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was a living American poet. Unknown to his time, Dickinson became known after his use of form and complexity. An excellent student, Dickinson taught at the Amherst Academy (now Amherst College) for seven years and then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year. Dickinson began writing as a teenager. His early influences include Leonard Humphrey, principal at Amherst Academy, and a family friend named Benjamin Franklin Newton, who sent Dickinson a book of poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his spare time, Dickinson studied botany and produced a large herbarium. He has also maintained close contact with various contacts. One of his friends, with Judge Otis Phillips Lord, seems to have grown in love before the death of King in 1884. Dickinson died of kidney disease in Amherst, Massachusetts, May 15, 1886, at the age of 55. She would be laid to rest in her family home in West Cemetery. Homestead, where Dickinson was born, is now a museum.