Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Largely unpublished and unknown during her lifetime, her work is now widely regarded as canonical. The Poetry Foundation describes her as having "created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized."

Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a prominent family. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning home to Amherst.

Although Dickinson was a prolific writer, only 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. Today her poems are widely regarded as groundbreaking with their use of short acerbic lines, lean descriptions, and slant or off-rhyme. Her poetry primarily deals with nature and mortality.