Emily Dickinson was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, and also served in Congress. She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48). Around 1850 Dickinson started to write poems. They were first in fairly conventional style. After ten years …showed first 75 words of 347 total…

…showed last 75 words of 347 total…Johnson's 1955 edition of Emily Dickinson's poems finally gave readers a complete and accurate text. Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern poetry. Her frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken meter, unconventional metaphors have contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication.