60 Fun Facts About Emily Dickinson

In one Dickinson poem, what creature buzzes between the dying speaker and the light?

A fly, with its 'blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz'; then 'the windows failed', and 'I could not see to see.'

About how many poems did Dickinson write?

About 1,800, yet fewer than a dozen of them were published while she was alive.

Dickinson wrote that to make a prairie takes a clover, one bee and what?

Revery, and she adds that 'The revery alone will do, If bees are few.'

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

Her younger sister Lavinia then spent years urging editors and publishers to print them, and a first selection appeared in 1890.

In Dickinson's 'I felt a Funeral, in my Brain', mourners creak across the soul in boots of what?

Lead; then 'space began to toll' as if all the heavens were a bell, leaving the speaker 'wrecked, solitary, here.'

Which American poet did Dickinson tell Higginson she had never read, because she was told his work was disgraceful?

Walt Whitman. 'I never read his book, but was told that it was disgraceful,' she wrote, adding that Miss Prescott's 'Circumstance' 'followed me in the dark, so I avoided her.'

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

A lawyer, Edward Dickinson bought his daughter many books, then begged her not to read them because he feared they would 'joggle the mind'.

In Dickinson's poem 'I never saw a Moor', what does she say she can picture anyway?

The heather; and though she 'never spoke with God', she is 'certain' of heaven's spot 'As if the chart were given'.

Dickinson told Higginson that her mother had no interest in what?

Thought. In the same letter she wrote that her family were all religious 'except me', and addressed 'an eclipse, every morning, whom they call their Father'.

Dickinson told Higginson that after her tutor died, what was her only companion for several years?

Her dictionary: 'my lexicon was my only companion,' she wrote, adding, 'I went to school, but in your manner of the phrase had no education.'

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

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Why she left after one year is still disputed: missing her family, resistance to its religious revivals and a curriculum with little new to offer have all been proposed.

In one of Dickinson's most famous poems, Death kindly stops to take the speaker for a ride in what?

A carriage. The slow ride passes a school, 'fields of gazing grain' and the setting sun, then pauses before a house whose roof is 'scarcely visible', her grave.

Which poet's collection did Dickinson receive in 1850 from her young friend Benjamin Franklin Newton?

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Newton had spent weeks talking books with her and guiding her reading, and his sudden death in 1853 shook her deeply.

Dickinson thanked Higginson for his criticism of her poems by calling it what?

The surgery, she wrote, 'was not so painful as I supposed', and she sent him more poems in the same letter.

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

A gardener, perhaps, in Farr's view: as she withdrew from society, she sent friends bouquets with verses attached in her place.

What name is now given to the small handmade booklets into which Dickinson copied her poems from 1858?

Fascicles: no one knew the forty booklets existed until after Dickinson died.

Dickinson's most productive writing years overlapped which conflict?

The American Civil War. When Higginson was away in an army camp, she wrote to him there, 'War feels to me an oblique place.'

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

The Evergreens was Edward's way of keeping the couple in Amherst after they had considered moving west.

In Dickinson's poem, what is 'the thing with feathers' that perches in the soul?

Hope, which sings 'in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea', yet 'never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.'

During an 1855 trip, Dickinson likely heard the famed preacher Charles Wadsworth in which city?

Philadelphia. The friendship they began lasted until Wadsworth died in the 1880s, one of a run of deaths that marked her last years.

In the Dickinson poem that calls being somebody dreary, a public name is compared to what creature?

A frog, telling its name 'the livelong day To an admiring bog!', her joke on how dreary fame would be.

Three draft letters Dickinson wrote between 1858 and 1861 to an unidentified recipient are known as what?

The Master Letters survive only as drafts, and no one knows whether finished copies were ever sent.

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

The Atlantic Monthly essay drew an unsigned reply: she wrote her name in pencil on a card and tucked it inside a smaller envelope.

What was the name of the big dog that Dickinson's father bought her?

Carlo. When he died in 1866, she sent Higginson a terse note, 'Carlo died', signed it, and asked, 'Would you instruct me now?'

How did Dickinson describe her eyes to Higginson?

Like the sherry the guest leaves in the glass: she sent that word portrait because, she wrote, 'I had no portrait, now.'

How did Dickinson sign some of her letters to Higginson?

'Your Scholar' was her customary sign-off, and in one letter she told him, 'You were not aware that you saved my life.'

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

From the other side of a door. Researchers still disagree whether her withdrawal was her own decision or the result of a medical condition.

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

White, though as a young woman she told a cousin that she wore 'a brown dress with a cape if possible browner'.

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

Reddish, in 'two smooth bands'; at that first meeting she told him that if a book made her feel 'as if the top of my head were taken off', she knew it was poetry.

When Higginson urged a meeting in 1868, what did Dickinson say she would never cross?

Her father's ground: 'I do not cross my father's ground to any house or town,' she wrote, so Higginson came to Amherst himself in August 1870.

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

Otis Phillips Lord, a longtime family friend, grew close to her after his wife died in 1877, and her drafts suggest she considered marrying him.

Dickinson's poem declares that 'Much Madness is divinest' what?

Sense, and 'Much sense the starkest madness': assent to the majority and you are sane, but 'Demur, you're straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain.'

In Dickinson's 'A Bird came down the Walk', what does the bird bite in halves and eat raw?

A worm, an 'angle-worm'; then the bird drinks 'a dew' and hops sidewise 'To let a beetle pass'.

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

'Called Back' was the title of a popular novel a friend had sent her, which she called 'a haunting story'.

When Dickinson fainted in 1884, seeing 'a great darkness coming', her doctor called it the revenge of what?

The nerves, said the doctor, but she asked her cousins, 'who but Death had wronged them?'

What cause of death did Dickinson's physician record?

Bright's disease, lasting two and a half years by the physician's account, took hold after a run of deaths that included her young nephew Gib's in 1883.

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

Emily Brontë's poem was a favourite of Dickinson's, and Higginson read it at the service though he had met her only twice.

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

Buttercups: she had chosen six Irish laborers to bear her coffin to West Cemetery.

Which Dickinson poem did she complain a newspaper had altered with its punctuation?

'A Narrow Fellow in the Grass' ran as 'The Snake', and she told Higginson it was 'robbed of me', lest he think she had deceived him about not printing.

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

'Success is counted sweetest' was printed after Helen Hunt Jackson, also born in Amherst, spent two years urging her to contribute a poem.

Dickinson wrote that the brain is wider than what, because it can take it in 'With ease, and you beside'?

The sky; the same poem finds the brain 'deeper than the sea' and 'just the weight of God'.

Which traditional verse form did Dickinson use most often in her poems?

The ballad stanza, with lines alternating four and three beats, lets some of her poems be sung to hymn tunes such as 'Amazing Grace'.

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

The dash in her handwriting came in many lengths and angles, some even vertical, and her first editors swapped them for ordinary punctuation.

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

Smudge marks and needle punctures let Franklin match the sheets, and critics have since argued that each packet's order was deliberate.

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

The Belle of Amherst shares its title with her teenage boast: 'I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year.'

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

Cynthia Nixon plays her, and her voiceover recites Dickinson's poems at intervals through the film.

On which streaming service did the 2019 comedy-drama series Dickinson premiere?

Apple TV+ premiered it in November 2019, casting the rapper Wiz Khalifa as Death.

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

Taylor Swift says a quill lyric sounds 'like a letter written by Emily Dickinson's great-grandmother while sewing a lace curtain'.

Which William Styron novel ends with a line borrowed from Dickinson's 'Ample Make This Bed'?

Sophie's Choice ends 'This was not judgment day – only morning. Morning: excellent and fair', denying the judgment day those words describe in the poem.

Which bird is the subject of Dickinson's poem 'A Route of Evanescence'?

A hummingbird, 'A resonance of emerald, A rush of cochineal'; she sent copies of the poem to several friends, Higginson among them.

Which institution's library now holds the herbarium of pressed plants Dickinson made as a schoolgirl?

Harvard University's Houghton Library holds it, and a facsimile edition and a digital copy let anyone page through its more than 400 plants.

Dickinson's poem 'There's a certain Slant of light' describes afternoons in which season?

Winter; its light gives 'Heavenly hurt' that leaves 'no scar, But internal difference, Where the meanings are'.

Which American composer wrote the 1950 song cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson?

Aaron Copland titled all but one song with its poem's first line, because Dickinson had given almost none of her poems titles.

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

The US Congress seat lasted one term, and while he served, Emily and her sister visited him in Washington in 1855.

Some keep the Sabbath going to church, Dickinson's poem says, but how does she keep it?

Staying at home, 'With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome'; she had stopped attending church by 1868 and never formally joined it.

In Dickinson's poem 'I died for Beauty', the man laid in the next tomb died for what?

Truth. 'The two are one; We brethren are,' he says, and they talk between the rooms 'Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.'

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

Boston, where he was taken ill while giving a speech in the state legislature and died within hours.

In 'I taste a liquor never brewed', Dickinson calls herself an 'Inebriate of' what?

Air, and 'debauchee of dew', drinking until seraphs swing their hats and saints run to windows to see 'the little tippler Leaning against the sun!'

Who wrote Dickinson's obituary for the Springfield Republican?

Her sister-in-law Susan also prepared Emily's body for burial, then ended the obituary with four lines of Dickinson's own verse.

Which Dickinson poem did the Springfield Republican print in August 1858, possibly without her permission?

'Nobody knows this little rose' appeared as 'To Mrs -, with a Rose'; every poem printed in her lifetime ran without her name, and she likely authorized none.