United States

Emily Dickinson

1830–1886

Born in 1830 and living almost all her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson wrote close to 1,800 poems, mostly in private; fewer than a dozen appeared in print while she was alive. Her sister Lavinia found the manuscripts after her death in 1886, and the first selection came out in 1890. Death, immortality, faith and doubt, love and the inner mind are her subjects, compressed into hymn-like stanzas with dashes and slant rhyme. She is now counted among the most original voices in American poetry.