60 Fun Facts About Emily Dickinson

In which US state was Emily Dickinson born, and did she spend almost her whole life?

The family Homestead in Amherst, built by her grandfather in 1813, is now the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Roughly how many poems did Dickinson write?

Only ten of them appeared in print during her lifetime, all anonymously and heavily edited.

How many of Dickinson's poems were published in her lifetime?

Five of them ran unsigned in a Springfield newspaper between 1852 and 1866.

Who discovered Dickinson's poems in her desk after her death?

Lavinia had promised to burn her sister's papers, and did burn most of the letters, but recognised the poems' worth.

Which two people edited the first selection of Dickinson's poems, published in 1890?

They altered punctuation and capitalisation to suit the taste of the day; the 115-poem volume went through eleven printings in two years.

Whose 1955 edition first restored Emily Dickinson's poems close to her manuscripts?

His three-volume variorum left the poems untitled and numbered, punctuation and odd capitals intact.

What was the profession of Dickinson's father, Edward?

He was also treasurer of the college for nearly forty years and served a term in the U.S. Congress.

Dickinson's grandfather Samuel was one of the founders of which institution?

He also built the Homestead in 1813, the mansion that anchored family life for most of a century.

Which family member did Dickinson call 'Awe' and run to as a child 'if anything befell me'?

In the same letter she called her mother 'an awful Mother, but I liked her better than none'.

For how many years did Dickinson study at Amherst Academy?

The former boys' school had opened to girls only two years before she and her sister enrolled in 1840.

Which school did Dickinson attend for less than a year after leaving Amherst Academy?

Explanations for her early exit range from poor health to rebellion against its evangelical fervour to plain homesickness.

Which second cousin's 1844 death from typhus traumatised the teenage Emily Dickinson?

She wrote two years later that she felt she would die too if she could not watch over her friend's face.

Which poet's work, sent to Dickinson in 1850 by Benjamin Franklin Newton, taught her that 'words had life'?

She later listed Keats and the Brownings as her poets, and Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne and Revelation for prose.

Dickinson kept a leather-bound herbarium containing how many pressed flower specimens?

She classified them with the Linnaean system across 66 pages; a facsimile was published in 2006.

According to scholar Judith Farr, Dickinson was better known in her lifetime as what than as a poet?

Friends who received her flowers with verses attached 'valued the posy more than the poetry'.

What did Dickinson call the small hand-sewn manuscript books in which she gathered her poems from 1858?

The forty booklets held nearly eight hundred poems, and nobody knew they existed until after she died.

To which correspondent did Dickinson send more than three hundred letters, more than to anyone else?

She told her in 1882 that, Shakespeare excepted, she had taught her more than anyone living.

What was the name of the house Edward Dickinson built next door for his son Austin?

Their daughter Martha Dickinson Bianchi inherited it along with the copyright to her aunt's poems.

A 1998 infrared study found which name deliberately erased from some of Dickinson's poems?

Eleven dedications were censored, presumably by Austin's lover, who was her rival.

On her longest trip from home in 1855, Dickinson met the minister Charles Wadsworth in which city?

She called him 'my Shepherd from Little Girlhood' and saw him only twice more after he moved to San Francisco.

Which newspaper, owned by family friend Samuel Bowles, published Dickinson poems anonymously?

It retitled one of her poems 'The Snake' and added punctuation she said changed its meaning.

Three drafts Dickinson wrote between 1858 and 1861 to an unidentified man are known as what?

Who 'Master' was, or whether he was anyone at all, is still argued over by scholars.

Dickinson wrote to Higginson in 1862 after reading his 'Letter to a Young Contributor' in which magazine?

Her unsigned letter asked whether her verse was 'alive' and enclosed four poems.

What was the name of Dickinson's dog, whom she called one of her only real companions?

After sixteen years of companionship the dog died in 1866, and she never owned another.

How did Dickinson describe her eyes to Higginson?

In the same self-portrait she was 'small, like the wren' with hair 'bold, like the chestnut bur'.

How did Dickinson sign some of her letters to Higginson?

She also signed as 'Your Gnome' and told him years later that he had saved her life in 1862.

From about 1867, how did Dickinson often talk with visitors?

Locals who exchanged messages with her in her last fifteen years rarely saw her in person.

What colour was Dickinson usually dressed in when she was seen at all in her later years?

Her one surviving garment is a white cotton dress, probably sewn between 1878 and 1882.

When Higginson finally met Dickinson in 1870, which colour did he say her hair was?

He also said no one had ever 'drained my nerve power so much' and that he was glad not to live near her.

When Higginson urged her to visit Boston in 1868, Dickinson replied that she did not cross what?

He gave in and came to Amherst two years later for their first meeting.

Which elderly judge from Salem is thought to have been Dickinson's late-life romance?

They wrote to each other every Sunday and she called him 'My lovely Salem'; he gave her a Shakespeare concordance in 1880.

Which weekday did Dickinson call 'a deeply depressed Day', being furthest from her Sunday letters?

She and the judge wrote to each other 'religiously every Sunday'.

Which faculty wife had an affair with Austin Dickinson and later co-edited Emily's poems?

She never met the poet, referring to her as 'a lady whom the people call the Myth'.

What did Dickinson's last known letter, to her Norcross cousins, say?

The two words later appeared on her gravestone.

How old was Dickinson when she died in May 1886?

Her physician recorded a kidney condition of two and a half years' duration.

What cause of death did Dickinson's physician record?

She had fainted while baking in the summer of 1884, seeing 'a great darkness coming', and never fully recovered.

At Dickinson's funeral, Higginson read 'No Coward Soul Is Mine', her favourite by which writer?

Higginson had met the poet only twice; the service in the Homestead library was short and simple.

At her own request, Dickinson's coffin was carried to the cemetery through fields of what?

It was a white coffin, dressed with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a lady's slipper orchid and blue field violets.

Which Dickinson poem, printed as 'The Snake', did she complain had its meaning altered by an added comma?

Judith Farr argues the newspaper's punctuation lost the 'breathless immediacy' of meeting a snake.

Which poem, the last published in Dickinson's lifetime, appeared anonymously in A Masque of Poets?

Jackson had been at Amherst Academy with Dickinson as a girl and was deeply involved in publishing.

How many poems did the 1955 editor estimate Dickinson wrote in 1862, her most productive year?

The first half of the 1860s, after she withdrew from social life, was her most productive period.

Which hymn-like verse form did Dickinson use most often, letting her poems be sung to popular tunes?

Its ABCB quatrains alternate tetrameter and trimeter, which is why so many of her poems fit 'Amazing Grace'.

Which punctuation mark is the most famous feature of Dickinson's manuscripts?

Later editors have used typeset dashes of varying length and angle to imitate her handwriting.

What physical evidence did Ralph W. Franklin use to reassemble Dickinson's poem packets for his 1981 edition?

Critics have since argued that the order of poems within each packet was deliberate and thematic.

A one-woman Broadway play about Dickinson that opened in 1976 is titled what?

It won several awards and was later adapted for television.

Who plays Dickinson in Terence Davies's 2016 film A Quiet Passion?

Hailee Steinfeld took the role in the 2019 streaming series Dickinson.

On which streaming service did the series Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld, premiere in 2019?

One episode used a song by a pop star who is a distant cousin of the poet.

Which pop star, a distant cousin of Dickinson, credits her for 'quill pen songs'?

She joked that if a lyric sounds like a letter written by Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing lace, that is the Quill genre.

Which 1979 William Styron novel borrows its final line from Dickinson's 'Ample Make This Bed'?

Alan J. Pakula's film version kept the borrowed line as well.

In what year did the US Postal Service issue an 8-cent Emily Dickinson stamp?

She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame two years later.

Which university acquired Dickinson's herbarium along with her manuscripts in 1950?

Amherst College holds a lock of her hair and the only positively identified photograph of her.

A square named after Dickinson lies in which European capital?

Square Emily-Dickinson is in the 20th arrondissement.

Which composer, famous for Appalachian Spring, is among those who set Dickinson's poems as art songs?

Samuel Barber, John Adams and Michael Tilson Thomas have also set her words; her cousin Clarence Dickinson did so in 1898.

Dickinson's father Edward represented Massachusetts in which national body from 1853 to 1855?

He was also treasurer of Amherst College for nearly forty years and served in both houses of the state legislature.

How many of Dickinson's peers made confessions of faith during the 1845 religious revival in Amherst?

Dickinson briefly felt she had 'found my Savior' but never made a formal declaration of faith.

Before Philadelphia, where did Dickinson spend three weeks on her long 1855 trip away from Amherst?

Her father was representing Massachusetts in Congress there; she travelled with her mother and sister.

Where did Dickinson's father suffer the stroke that killed him in June 1874?

At his funeral in the Homestead's entrance hall she stayed in her room with the door cracked open.

What promise did Dickinson extract from her sister Lavinia in her last years?

Lavinia never married and stayed at the Homestead until her own death in 1899.

Who wrote Dickinson's obituary for the Springfield Republican?

She had also been asked to wash the poet's body, and closed the obituary with four lines of Dickinson's verse.

Which poem was the first of Dickinson's to appear in the Springfield Republican, possibly without her permission?

The paper printed her poems anonymously and heavily edited, with formal titles added.