Literary Women 1: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
One of the most fabled figures in American Literature, the “Myth of Amherst” is as famous for her eccentric life as for her matchless poetry. Quirky and engaging as a child, she had an apparently normal upbringing and attended Mount Holyoke for a year. From that point on, however, she became increasingly withdrawn, started dressing entirely in white and ventured off her father’s Amherst, Massachusetts, property less and less often. Finally, she stopped leaving the house altogether, refused to see visitors and spent almost all her time in her room. Even in her final illness, she allowed a doctor to “examine” her only from a distance as she passed once behind a partly open doorway.
Publishing only eight poems during her lifetime, Dickinson left behind a total of 1776, neatly written out and hand-bound in little books hidden in her room. This verse came to be recognized as some of the most brilliant every produced in the English language. Phrased and metered with tremendous economy and art, Dickinson’s poetry reveals towering intellect, singular wit and searing passion all the more startling for the seemingly confined life she led. She was undeniably agoraphobic, a condition many scholars blamed on a failed love affair with an unidentified man. But hints dropped to friends and family indicated Dickinson viewed her isolation as a form of freedom and consciously used her idiosyncrasies to construct a literary persona that would long outlive her.
(Excerpted from 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about Women’s History)