Dickinson, Emily

The American poet Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful lawyer. She studied art and science at Amherst Academy and then briefly at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. She returned home after a year. Dickinson's chose to lead a solitary life; her social life consisted of her family and a handful of close friends. She lived in her parents' house all her life and travelled little, although she did visit Boston and Washington. She corresponded with a handful men who were her intellectual companions and who advised her on her writing, but she wrote most of her poems in secret. Dickinson's literary estate consists of 1775 poems, but only seven were published in her lifetime. She wrote over a thousand letters.