Emily Dickinson was born in 1830. Her family tree begins with Nathaniel Dickinson who was part of the New World discovery that was led by John Winthrop in 1630. Her family had their earliest beginnings in Hadley which was located in Massachusetts. By the time that Emily was born, the family had begun to accumulate wealth.
Emily Dickinson spent time at Amherst Academy which had only begun to accept girls before her entry into the school. She was allowed to study English literature, Classical Literature, Latin, and History among other traditional subjects.
Emily was exposed to a lot of death in her early years which began to give her the source of various literary inspirations. Emily Dickinson would become known for two famous collections. One is that of literary consideration. Her book of short stories became highly regarded. The other was a pressed flower collection which is now held in the Harvard University Houghton Library.
In 1847, Dickinson would begin school at Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. However, she wouldn't be happy enough to stay there and soon would go home to Amherst.
Dickinson's work was highly influenced by William Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson. By 1858, Emily Dickinson was gathering together her work and carefully placing it into a collection of poems. Her final achievement would be one that even those closest to her wouldn't know about until after her death.
Emily Dickinson was able to compile over eight hundred poems between 1858 and 1865 even though many of those poems were not written during that time. Her posthumous publications were well received. Today, Emily Dickinson's literary legacy continues to live on and her work continues to be studied in colleges and universities as well as many other educational facilities across the world.
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