Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) After great pain, a formal feeling comes; Apparently with no surprise; I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain; I heard a Fly buzz—when I died; Mine Enemy is growing old; Much Madness Is Divinest Sense; She Rose to His Requirement; What Soft—Cherubic Creatures— LINKS Emily Dickinson: Poems http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/dickinson/ This site contains the text for Dickinson's Poems which was edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and originally published in 1896. Emily Dickinson Page http://www.planet.net/pkrisxle/emily/dickinson.html This extensive site contains information about Dickinson's life, links to other references to her work, information on how to join an e-mail discussion list about her works, as well as a page designed especially for students using the internet to do research about Dickinson. BIOGRAPHY Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) Dickinson, one of three children, was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a prominent lawyer. Except for one year away at a nearby college and a trip with her sister to Washington, D.C., to visit her father when he was serving in Congress, she lived out her life, unmarried, in her parents' home. During her trip to Washington, she met the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a married man, whom she came to characterize as her "dearest earthly friend." Little is known of this relationship except that Dickinson's feelings for Wadsworth were strong. In 1862 Wadsworth moved to San Francisco, an event that coincided with a period of Dickinson's intense poetic creativity. Also in that year, she initiated a literary correspondence with the critic T. W. Higginson, to whom she sent some of her poems for his reactions. Higginson, although he recognized her talent, was puzzled by her startling originality and urged her to write more conventionally. Unable to do so, she concluded, we may surmise, that she would never see her poems through the press. In fact, only seven of her poems were published while she was alive, none of them with her consent. After her death, the extraordinary richness of her imaginative life came to light with the discovery of her more than one thousand lyrics.