Emily Dickinson: Everyman's Poetry

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edward Dickinson, a lawyer and politician. Despite receiving a good education, she returned home to Amherst, where she spent the rest of her life, at one time writing more than one poem a day. Her refusal to compromise her highly condensed expression, which meant that only a tiny fraction of her work was published in her lifetime, makes her seem startlingly modern today.