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Emily Dickinson

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American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is today best known for her use of slant-rhyme, conceits, and unconventional punctuation, as well as her near-legendary reclusive habits. She was part of a prominent Amherst, Massachusetts family. As neither Emily nor her sister Lavinia ever married, they remained at home and looked after their parents. Dickinson became very reclusive with age, sometimes speaking to guests from behind a door, but she also maintained close, intellectual friendships through her correspondence with literary men Samuel Bowles and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, as well as her best friend, neighbour, and sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson. Dickinson has perhaps unfairly earned a reputation for being a rather morbid poet, focused intently on death. Death was certainly a preoccupation of Dickinson's, especially as her New England culture was permeated with evangelical Christian questions of salvation, redemption, and the afterlife. However, Dickinson also wrote powerfully about nature and questions of knowledge, faith, and love. When Dickinson did write about death, she wrote it 'slant', coming to the subject with her own distinctive twist. In the 1863...
Read the essay: Emily Dickinson: Writing it 'Slant' by Erin Nyborg
# Title Description Contributor
1 Poems: Series One, by Emily Dickinson (reading)

LibriVox recording of Poems: Series One, by Emily Dickinson. Read by Shurtagal. ...

2 A Discussion of Emily Dickinson's 'I started early, took my dog'.

Dr Sally Bayley presents an illuminating reading of Emily Dickinson's 'I started early...

Sally Bayley
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 Literature and Victorian Religion

Most of the high profile female writers of this period were committed Christians. The Broad...

Julian Thompson
2 Emily Dickinson: Writing it 'Slant'

American poet Emily Dickinson (...

Erin Nyborg
# Title Description Author
1 Poems, Third Series

By Emily Dickinson. Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd.

Emily Dickinson
2 Poems, Second Series

By Emily Dickinson. Edited by two of her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson.

Emily Dickinson
3 Poems

By Emily Dickinson. Edited by two of her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson.

Emily Dickinson
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Manuscript of 'A route of evanescense'

Original manuscript of Emily Dickinson's (1830-1886) poem "A route of evanescense" which she...

2 Emily Dickinson Poems Book Cover
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Publication — is the Auction

Publication — is the Auction

Of the Mind of Man —

Poverty — be...