- Born in Amherst, Massachussets on December 10, 1830. .
- Her family was well known for political and educational activity.
- Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, and also served in Congress.
-She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48).
- In 1850 Dickinson began to write poems. * The first poems were in a fairly conventional syle.
- After ten years of practice there was room for experience.
- From 1858 pn, she assembled many of her poems in packets of 'fascicles', which she bound herself with needle and thread.
-After Civil War Dickinson restricted her contacts. She spent most of the time in her room.
- Although she lived a secluded life, her letters reveal knowledge of the writings of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne.
- She addressed many poems to Reverend Charles Wadsworth and Samuel Bowles, editor of Springfield Republican. These men are possible love affairs.
- Dickinson's death was in 1886.