Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Widely acknowledged as an original creator who defined her own rules for poetry, Emily Dickinson remained unsung during her lifetime, with very few published works.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, (December 10, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA - May 15, 1886, Amherst) is one of America's greatest poets of the nineteenth century. She studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years and briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family in Amherst. Her reasons to give up college education less than a year after joining remains unclear-ill health, homesickness, dislike of the school could have been possible reasons. The poet preferred to live the greater part of her life in isolation. Her poems were unconventional and contained short lines, lacked titles, used slant rhyme as well as capitalization and punctuation patterns that were not accepted. Although Dickinson's family and friends had knowledge about her writings, it was only after her death in 1886 that her works became public and catapulted her to instant fame.