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Emily  Dickinson
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¥D­n¤åÃþ¡GPoem
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1830-1886

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        ·R»eÄR•¨f§ó´Ë¡]Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, «áºÙ¨f§ó´Ë¡^¥X¥Í©ó1830¦~¡A¦b¨|¦³¤T¦W¤l¤kªº¨f§ó´Ë®a¤¤±Æ¦æ²Ä¤G¡C¨ä¤÷·R¼wµØ•¨f§ó´Ë¡]Edward Dickinson¡^¬°¦w¶P¥q¯S¡]Amherst¡^·í¦aªº¥K²Ô¡A¨ä¥À·R»eÄR•¨f§ó´Ë(Emily Norcross Dickinson)¬°¤H¦wÀR»ü¾ë¡A¨ä¥S«Â·G¶ø´µ¥Å•¨f§ó´Ë(William Austin Dickinson)Ä~©Ó¤÷¿Ë¦b·í¦aªº¦a¦ì¡A¦¨¬°«ß®v¡C·R»eÄR•¨f§ó´Ë»P¨ä©f©ÔÁ¨©g¶®(Lavinia Dickinson)²×¨ä¤@¥Í¦P¦í¨Ã·ÓÅU©¼¦¹¡C·í¨f§ó´Ëº¥º¥¨HÁô¹P¥@¡A©ÔÁ¨©g¶®¦P¨ä©n²×¥Í¤£±B¡AºÉ¤ßºÉ¤O®Æ²z®a°È¡C

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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

1830-1886

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 Family & Friends

    A. Family

    B. Circle of Friends

 Important Incidents in Life

    A. Romantic Relationship

    B. Traumatic Strikes

 Features of Work

 Last Years and Posthumous Publication

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 Family & Friends

Born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst in Massachusetts, where her deathbed was on May 15, 1886, Emily Dickinson remained unmarried her whole life.  Her family and the small circle of friends were weightily important throughout her life.

A.     Family – Emily Dickinson was born as a second child in the family

1.      Father – Edward Dickinson, a prominent figure in the community of Amherst, he was an influential citizen in Amherst.  His influence on Emily makes her dropped out of school and stayed with the family at all times.

2.      Mother – Emily Norcross Dickinson, a submissive and reticent wife mainly involved in domestic life

3.      Elder Brother – William Austin Dickinson, like his father, served as a lawyer and a treasurer in Amherst, who married Susan Gilbert

4.      Younger Sister – Lavinia Dickinson, remained unmarried like Emily and took care of the family after Edward’s death and Austin married.

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B.     Circle of Friends – the small circle of friends seem to be extremely important for Emily Dickinson and strongly connected with her life

1.      Early Connections with friends

Sophia Holland and Abiah Root were close friends to Emily.  They corresponded with Emily until Holland’s death at 14 and Root married.

2.      Susan Huntington Gilbert—After Emily left Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Emily developed a steady friendship with Susan.  Their closeness was interrupted by Susan’s marriage with Austin.

3.      Helen Hunt Jackson—Emily and Helen knew each other for long when they grew up in Amherst, but only later in her life in 1870s that she corresponded with Helen.

4.      Samuel Bowles—Editor of Springfield Republican that Emily first met in1858.  Bowles encouraged Emily to write, but his neglect toward Emily’s submission and contribution of her poetry.  People speculated that it was this indifference toward her contribution of works to Bowles that makes Emily gradually withered and retreated her contact with the outside world.

5.      Thomas Wentworth Higginson—an essayist that encouraged Emily to write and send him her poetry, and yet, like Bowles, he did not intend to publish her poems as Emily had hoped.

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 Important Incidents in Life

Education – After Dickinson graduated from Amherst Academy, which was  a co-education school, she attended school at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary at South Hadley for merely one year.  She had once revealed how she was appealed to the Seminary environment.  However, it is true that Emily was very much a family-attached person and with her father’s insistence and determination, Emily withdrew from her education.  Instead, she self-educated at home.

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A.     Romantic Relationship

1.      Benjamin Newton – a clerk in Edward Dickinson’s law office, died at relatively young age in 1853; encouraged Emily in developing her talents in poetry.  Newton’s influence on Emily might be noticed in her poem and letters.

2.      Reverend Charles Wadsworth – a brilliant married preacher whose moving to west coast of the country had once brought sorrow to Emily.  Yet, when he returned, Emily seemed to transform her emotional expression all into poetry.

3.      Judge Otis Phillips Lord – a widower that Emily had emotional attachment with in her forties.  It is said that Emily had considered to marry Judge Lord after a stead and long association.  His death had brought about certain damage toward Emily’s health.

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B.     Traumatic Strikes

1.      Death of the Beloved

Bed-ridden Edward Dickinson died in 1874, and his wife went after him in 1882.  Emily and Lavinia looked after their parents since they were seriously ill.  Later in 1884, the last straw fell on her along with Judge Lord’s passing away. 

2.      Editor’s responses to her poems

Bowles and Higginson’s ignorance and criticism of Emily’s poems strongly affected her.  It is believed that Emily only saw 7 of her poems amounted around 1,775 published during her life time.  Among these published poems, some of them were published anonymously, and some of them were mildly criticized by Bowles for the features of transience that he claimed to be “unhealthy lament” from a young lady.  Emily might have taken this remark by heart and was disappointed more when she realized it was not possible for Bowles nor Higginson to appreciate her poems. 

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 Features of Work

The influence of Emerson and English female novelist Emily Bronte, and other literary figures had lucid and consistent effect on Emily early in her lifetime.  All of her life, she had been surrounded by sickness and death, and hence death, love, faith and nature remained the main themes in her creation. 

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 Last Years and Posthumous Publication

Emily deceased because of nephritis in 1886.  Lavinia found about 1,000 poems after her death.  According to Emily’s last will, Lavinia burnt most of the letters, and as to the poems that Lavinia found, she entrusted them to be edited and published.  Among versions of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the most convincing and authoritative one was the Harvard edition, published in the year of 1955 and edited as three volumes by Thomas H. Johnson.

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Reference

Dictionary of American Biography Base Set.  American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.

Gay & Lesbian Biography.  St. James P, 1997.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Realism, Naturalism, and Local Color, 1865-1917.  Gale Research, 1988.

Leder, Sharon with Andrea Abbott.  The Language of Exclusion: The Poetry of Emily Dickenson and Christina Rossetti.  NY: Greenwood P, 1987.

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