Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) is considered one of America's great poets. Dickinson lived a private life, rarely venturing beyond her home and her close circle of family and friends. But she lived that life intensely, in vivid moments of observation and reflection captured in astonishingly original verse. She wrote secretly; only seven of her poems were published while she was living, and those without her consent. After Dickinson's death, her sister discovered more than 1,700 poems that she had written. Four years later, the first book of Dickinson's poetry was published.

Emily Dickinson was born and died in Amherst, Massachusetts, a member of a prominent family. Her closest friends were her brother, William Austin, and her sister, Lavinia. Emily seldom left Amherst. She did spend one year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, ten miles from home, and took a trip to Washington and Philadelphia with her father. Her grandfather was one of the founders of Amherst College. Her father, Edward, served as treasurer of Amherst College and was also a state representative and a state senator.

Dickinson always delighted in reading books that might "joggle the Mind." She read a few books very deeply, especially the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, and the works of such writers as Emerson, Keats, Tennyson, and George Eliot.

Dickinson's love life remains something of a mystery. Early on, she was befriended by Benjamin Newton, a law student who encouraged her writing. However, he died young, causing Dickinson to enter a crisis. She turned for advice to a well-known minister named Charles Wadsworth, who became a close friend. During the late 1850s, she wrote drafts of love letters to an unknown person and some believe she may have been secretly in love with Wadsworth. She also corresponded with the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and was courted by a family friend, Judge Otis P. Lord. Perhaps because of illnesses, Dickinson's last twenty-five years were spent in seclusion, and she never married.