Research Guides: Emily Dickinson: Biography

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 - May 15 1886)

Some of her poems suggest science and empiricism as alternatives to unexamined belief; many others portray the particulars of church services against the need for reason. It is an indication of their tolerance that Dickinson’s family never pressed her in these matters. Indeed, Dickinson’s father provided his daughter with the kind of training that encouraged such inquiry. She was well read, particularly in the physical sciences, and she had ready access to her father’s and the Amherst College libraries. The men of the family had read many of the same works as Dickinson, but such readings had merely strengthened their religious convictions. Dickinson always maintained her belief in a supreme deity, but she doubted that human institutions provided a necessary link. Continue . . .

Source: Forman, Robert J. “Emily Dickinson.” Critical Survey of American Literature, Dec. 2016, pp. 722–735. From Literary Reference Center Plus database.

Book Collection

Emily Dickinson: solitary and celebrated poet

Resources

Emily Dickinson Museum THE MUSEUM WAS CREATED IN 2003 when the two houses merged under the ownership of Amherst College. The Museum is dedicated to educating diverse audiences about Emily Dickinson’s life, family, creative work, times, and enduring relevance, and to preserving and interpreting the Homestead and The Evergreens as historical resources for the benefit of scholars and the general public.
Poems by Emily Dickinson Poems by Emily Dickinson from poets.org.
"I Had a Terror": Emily Dickinson's Demon This essay examines what it calls the mental illness of poet Emily Dickinson through her poetry and through the author's own experience of a similar condition. Dickinson's poem "I Had a Terror" is interpreted as referring to a panic attack. The author describes his own panic attack and points out that because of modern psychopharmacology he is able to live a normal life. Without the medication, he says, he would have to live a life of seclusion similar to Dickinson's.
Poem: Because I could not stop for Death The article presents the poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson. First Line: Because I could not stop for Death - Last Line: Were toward Eternity -
Early Criticism of Emily Dickinson Journal article by Anna Mary Wells.
Some Uncollected Poems by Emily Dickinson Journal article by George F. Whicher.
An Acrostic Window on Emily Dickinson’s ‘I Dwell in Possibility’ Emily Dickinson is a poet of incarnation—of the small, concrete, and quotidian becoming a vessel for the infinite. In line with that incarnational impulse, she conceived of her self-bound fascicles as physical artifacts: each poem within one of these carefully arranged volumes is part of a ‘nosegay’, or a blossom emanating from a single stem.1

From Films On Demand database:

Emily Dickinson: A Certain Slant of Light Julie Harris takes viewers into Emily Dickinson’s everyday world in a small New England town to compare and contrast facts about the poet with her extraordinary, original insights. Dickinson’s reclusive life in her father’s mansion on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts, meant that she wrote almost all of her surviving work in this house. From cellar to cupola, we invoke her “certain slant of light” (her real and imagined perspectives). Other locations are Amherst College, Mount Holyoke Seminary (now College), the town cemetery next door to her childhood home, and commanding views on or near the shores of the Connecticut River. The paradox of the poet at home with limitless imagination is announced early in her stunning poem “The Brain Is Wider than the Sky.” As seen on PBS. (30 minutes)
Emily Dickinson While many of her literary peers achieved notoriety, “the woman in white” remained virtually unknown—by choice. The self-imposed obscurity of Emily Dickinson is just one of many aspects of her life that this program explores. Blending daguerreotypes, paintings, manuscripts, excerpts from Dickinson’s letters, and readings from nearly a dozen of her poems, this program presents the biography of one of America’s most unique and influential voices in poetry. (20 minutes)
I Cannot Dance Upon My Toes "I cannot dance upon my toes" by Emily Dickinson, featuring Cynthia Nixon, Marie Howe, Yo Yo Ma, Jill Johnson. Distributed by PBS Distribution.
The World of Emily Dickinson The acclaimed Claire Bloom portrays Emily Dickinson in this dramatic presentation of her “letters to the world.” Poems include… “This is my letter to the World” “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose” “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” “Surgeons must be very careful” “Dear March—Come in” “A Bird came down the Walk” “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” “Further in Summer than the Birds” “There’s a certain Slant of light” “The Sky is low—the Clouds are mean” “A Route of Evanescence” “Faith is a fine invention” “A word is dead” “Presentiment—is that long Shadow—on the Lawn” “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee” “Before I got my eye put out” “I never saw a Moor—” “I reckon-when I count at all—” “Success is counted sweetest” “I know some lonely Houses off the Road” “We do not know the time we lose—” “Heart! We will forget him!” “I got so I could hear his name—” “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!” “Because I could not stop for Death—” “My life closed twice before its close” “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” “The Bustle in a House” “What is—Paradise” “I dwell in Possibility” “Hope is the thing with feathers—” As seen on PBS. (30 minutes)
Emily Dickinson: A Concise Biography This overview of the life and literature of Emily Dickinson from the Famous Authors series offers an insight into the reclusive author of 1,775 poems and a valuable collection of letters. The video depicts Dickinson’s story as that of an individual in a society that smothers individuality and discusses the struggle of a female poet among male contemporaries. She did, however, know of and admire women writers like George Eliot and the Bronte sisters. She read avidly, and the video discusses the strong influence Shakespeare's work had on her. Dickinson lived next door to her closest friends—her brother Austin and his wife Susan Gilbert—in the family house, The Homestead, in Amherst, Massachusetts, a place still influenced by the puritanical tradition of practicality, work ethic, and faith at the time, and despite her reclusive reputation did have other meaningful friendships and correspondences. (32 minutes)
Emily Dickinson PBS video. Dramatic scenarios and New England landscapes illuminate the passionate genius of Dickinson, whose poems represent a broad range of imaginative experience.